Greetings, awesome humans (and robots)!

Before we get into todays story (titled with a term we’re all gonna learn a bit about), I need to do my usual plug for all the rest of the books and stories I have out there, with their links:

Links: Lunar Logic | Robot Galaxy Series | Final Orbit | Objective Reality

Links: T is for Time Travel | Annotated Robot Galaxy Series #CC3333 or #00B3B3

Even if you don’t buy my books yourself this week, I made this little graphic to help know what else you can do to support me (and other Indie Authors you know). Feel free to post/share this graphic widely:

And as always, make sure you read all the way to the end where I write about what’s been happening with The BIG Sci-Fi Podcast, share some other Indie Authors, and of course… there’s a bonus picture at the very end!

OMG this was such a rabbit hole. (Which, also led me to find out that there’s a Wikipedia article on the phrase “down the rabbit hole.”)

I had an idea for the story you’re about to read. If you’ve already read T is for Time Travel, then you met a certain professor who was able to manipulate some fundamental forces of nature.

This is a theme that recurs in much of my work (both published and unpublished) and stems from one of the ideas that I’m obsessed with… the fact that a couple hundred years ago, people knew that electricity and magnetism existed, but a lot of people thought that the scientists of the day who were interested in studying them were wasting their time. At least, studying electricity was regarded little more as a curiosity or spectacle than as an important field. (Even in Ben Franklin’s time.) What good is it?

Well, um… look at everything modern for the last hundred or so years. That studying something useless turned into sooooo many useful things in our daily lives (and some not-so-useful things).

These days… and by “these days” I mean for the last 2 or 3 decades, I’ve heard people complain about some aspects of particle physics and other branches of physics. What good is it? (Which has led folks at CERN to try to explain how the Higgs boson impacts everyday life.)

Well, frankly… we don’t 100% know.

And that’s okay.

So that led me to thinking about how physics might evolve and also being a fan of arts and crafts it led me to put two and two together and invent this term: craftphysics.

Then here’s how the rabbit hole went… synonyms for craft? Handiwork, workmanship, artifice… No... all those are boring. What about ones that are off the beaten path? That led me to: tinkering, contrivance and eventually two interesting words: bricolage* and poiesis.

(* I’m saving bricolage for another day.)

Poiesis isn’t in the standard dictionary. (I looked… see the bonus picture at the end) It’s more of a concept than a dictionary word. At least, that’s my determination after reading the Wikipedia entry for Poiesis. Which… I’ll warn you now… if you click on that entry, please make sure you have nothing important to do for the next hour or two because you might take the same journey I did clicking on the embedded physis, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Esthesic_and_poietic, which then led to me to “oh wow, there is a study of ‘signs’” to “hey wait, I knew that… that’s what semiotics is and I knew that” to “I want to spend all my free time next week becoming a dilettante* in semiotics.”

(*because I know it takes more than a week and more than reading a few web pages to become more than that)

Anyhoo… it’s amazing I even managed to finish this story. And that’s because of rabbit hole number two… figuring out the name of the asteroid to use at the very beginning of the story. Luckily, I know myself well enough to know that the thing to do was leave a placeholder for it, write the story, and then come back to it after the rest of the story was complete.

I did and then started to look into how asteroids are named… I hadn’t really thought about it before… and it turns out, because the Minor Planet Center website is down, I turned back to Wikipedia* that also lists all the minor planets. After browsing I realized I just needed to pick one… and so I did. But only after checking to make sure the numbered asteroid showed up in Pi.

…and maybe this whole thing is simply an allegory/metaphor for the fact that I haven’t been writing as much as normal for me. (wink)

(* And I made my annual donation to Wikipedia. It is such a fantastic service/resource.)

No matter what, don’t forget to read past the story, too… there’s stuff from other Indie Authors, recent BIG Sci-Fi Podcast episode links, and of course my bonus picture!

Poiesis

“Hey babe,” said the comforting voice on the communicator.

Artessa knew that at least five seconds had passed since Marek had said those two words. And each thing he uttered next would be slightly longer, at least for the next few days as he was outbound to asteroid 47047.

“Another day and I didn’t get anything done,” Artessa said.

But the next thing Marek said, which of course he had said before Artessa’s complaint even reached him, was, “What did you do today?”

She listed off a handful of errands. A student had called seeking advice. There was a broken spectrometer in the undergraduate lab that somehow became her problem. She had answered eleven messages and submitted a requisition request that had been sitting in her queue for days.

“… but I didn’t work on the study,” she concluded.

As she said it, her eyes landed on the instrument of her angst on the other side of the lab.

She should have given up and gone home an hour ago, but she couldn’t walk away and feel like a failure once again. Another day gone.

The instrument sat there, silently mocking her.

It was the same one she had used to impress an oversized committee of fellow craftphysicists during her doctoral examination. To anyone outside the field, it looked like an absurdly large pen, thick enough that Artessa had to wrap her whole hand around it. More than once, a visitor had reached for it before she could stop them.

Then came the inevitable question.

“What does it do?”

And Artessa would give the elevator-pitch version.

“It draws with matter.”

Which invariably produced another question.

“What does that mean?”

“It means the tip establishes a controlled wormhole throat a few microns across,” she would say. “I select what comes through it, control where it exits, and arrange the particles as I move the instrument.”

“So… it’s a three-dimensional printer?”

“No.”

“A very tiny particle accelerator?”

“No.”

“A magic pen?”

Artessa would sigh.

“Closer.”

The truth was that craftphysics lived somewhere between fabrication and fundamental physics. The instrument didn’t extrude material. It borrowed it, particle by particle, through transient wormholes whose far mouths could be coupled to reservoirs containing whatever the work required: carbon, silicon, metals, polymers, even short-lived exotic particles that could never survive long enough to be transported conventionally.

A skilled craftphysicist could draw a wire through empty space, weave a material with an atomic structure that had never existed before, or persuade matter to behave in ways nature hadn’t necessarily intended.

Now, Artessa simply stared at the device, waiting for Marek’s next words which were:

“That doesn’t sound like nothing, babe.”

“But it wasn’t craftphysics.”

--

“Hey babe,” came almost 7 seconds after Marek said it.

These semi-live conversations were frustrating, but Artessa still loved hearing his voice. The string of sentences that followed included a story about a small object their survey system had detected on the way outbound, something nobody had bothered cataloging because it was barely larger than their ship.

“So we might add another two days to this trip,” he said, followed by, “How was your day?”

“I don’t think I’m a craftphysicist anymore,” Artessa replied simply.

Then she opened up a game of numbers on her phone while she waited. Fourteen seconds for the round trip now, plus however long Marek needed to decide what to say.

She had completed almost half the puzzle when his voice arrived.

“Okay. Then what are you today?”

Artessa stared at the communicator.

She didn’t know how to answer that.

--

By the time the one-way delay had grown to twenty seconds, they had mostly given up trying to converse and switched to text.

Are you getting your work done today?

Artessa knew he meant well. He was trying to be encouraging and didn’t want to discourage the encouragement.

I will when I’m ready.

His reply came sixty-one seconds later.

Ready for what?

Artessa stared at the words. Ready to sit down? Ready to think? Ready to be brilliant? Ready to become her old self again?

She looked across the lab. Then she stood, walked over to the workbench, and picked up the instrument.

It recognized her grip and came alive. A faint violet glow formed inside the transparent collar near its tip as its confinement field initialized. Somewhere inside the building, feedstock reservoirs negotiated connections with the instrument and offered up their inventories.

CARBON-12. SILICON-28. COPPER-63. IRON-56.

A handful of more exotic choices blinked below them, accompanied by stern university warnings about allocation costs.

“No,” Artessa said to the empty laboratory. “I’m not ready.”

She rotated the instrument between her fingers.

She wished she could even define the condition of readiness she had spent months waiting for.

--

A picture came in from Marek.

It showed a delicate gray structure growing from the surface of the asteroid they were approaching, branching outward in thin, repeating curls.

I’ll bet craftphysics couldn’t explain this!

Artessa shook her head.

She’d tried explaining her field to him and was certain he understood at least half of it. But he enjoyed being wrong in ways specifically engineered to irritate her.

She enlarged the image.

Of course not! That’s electrostatic lofting. Charged dust. Craftphysics uses controlled wormhole throats to place particles where we want them. Completely different.

She sent it.

Then zoomed further into the photograph.

Those curls. They repeated themselves.

Artessa frowned.

Actually, wait.

She grabbed her instrument, selected carbon, and drew a thin black line into the air. It curved as she changed the throat timing.

The line folded back toward itself.

Artessa froze.

That wasn’t supposed to happen.

“Oh.”

She tried it again.

Her communicator chimed.

Was I right? Have I finally defeated craftphysics?

Artessa ignored him and drew another branch.

This one folded in on itself twice.

A minute later another message arrived.

Everything okay, babe?

She stared at the crooked black structure hovering over her workbench, at the instrument in her hand…

…and at the first craftphysics she had done in months.

She typed:

I don’t know yet.

She still didn’t know what she was today. But she knew what she wanted to do next.

[THE END]

What do you think…?

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Indie authors are here to help out other indie authors. This simply means we cross-promote in each other’s newsletters in the hope that we’ll find readers for each other!

Check this out… The digital god demands absolute emotional surrender. The Vatican is about to pull the plug. NEXUS-9: The Hesychast Protocol by Janus Whitmore is a gripping, high-concept hard sci-fi medical technothriller. Book 3 in the NEXUS-9 Chronicles.

And of course we do group promos where you can check out a whole bunch of writings from authors you don’t yet know!

Over at The BIG Sci-Fi podcast, we’re deep into Season 11 and covering a bunch of “old” movies! Check out our take and then tell us what you think!

(You can also listen the podcast them over on Spotify or wherever you like to listen to podcasts!)

What’s next?

I’ve done a lot of Robot Galaxy world re-building and I’m working my way into getting my daily writing habit back in place. Which means a lot of rabbit holes getting there.

So my bonus picture? That was me looking to see if poeisis was in my dictionary. It wasn’t exactly (it showed up as a suffix) which is why I said above I think it’s more a concept/term than a pure word.

Until next month… be good, be kind, be well!

-Adeena

Remember last time I asked about whether or not I should turn my Annotated Robot Galaxy Series (ARGS) book into an e-book? Well, I did it! It’s available on Amazon or from me directly.

What is the ARGS? It’s the 4 books of the Robot Galaxy Series (Crazy Foolish Robots, Robots Robots Everywhere, Silly Insane Humans, and Eleven Little Robots) all in one volume PLUS a pile of annotations throughout the book that explain a lot of the details. Think of them as behind the scenes notes!

Before we get into todays mini-story and the explanation of that… I need to do my usual plug for all the rest of the books and stories I have out there, with their links:

Links: Lunar Logic | Robot Galaxy Series | Final Orbit | Objective Reality

…and the new books:

Links: T is for Time Travel | Annotated Robot Galaxy Series #CC3333 or #00B3B3

Even if you don’t buy my books yourself this week, help an Indie Author out by telling someone, telling your book club, etc. Thanks!

Make sure you read all the way to the end where I write about what’s been happening with the podcast, share some things you should click on for other Indie Authors, and of course… there’s a bonus picture and bonus links at the very end!

Last month I told y’all the story of my series bible data loss.

It’s been a huge setback. Pretty much as big a setback as if I’d lost a manuscript in progress.

I’ve been working on recovery… but it’s been challenging and it’s delayed my ability to get T is for Tangent, my current primary work-in-progress, complete.

Add on top of that… I started a new day job! If you didn’t already know, I’m an engineer in the aerospace industry. More specifically, I’m what we call a “Mission Architect.” If you’ve seen me give a live talk, you’ve probably heard me joke that all that means is I’ve been in the industry long enough that they had to give me a cool title.

Of course that’s not really it!

Mission Architects like myself are responsible for figuring out how we achieve what the customer wants. Like say… there’s an organization who wants to monitor wildfires. They might know a few things about that what spectral band is useful. So I take that and figure out how that happens from space.

I didn’t choose the wildfire example randomly. Monitoring wildfires is one of the missions my new company, Muon Space, is involved in. Read about FireSat. (Of course, this all happened before I worked there, so I wasn’t involved in this mission.)

But even with the new job, I still get up at 4:30am in the morning and have an hour or so that is my “writing time,” which this past month has largely been “series bible recreation time” and “get brain back into T is for Tangent time.”

So I got an idea for this month’s newsletter… instead of writing a new piece of flash fiction (even though I have a backlog of ideas and half-started stories)… I thought it would be neat to give y’all a taste of that novel!

I went through and found a scene that should work as a standalone, approximately 1000-word story.

While I know a lot of the comments I get on my flash fiction is that y’all want more (i.e., it seems like there’s more of a story to tell)… this is of course true in this case. The snippet I pulled is the current Chapter 2. So there’s a whole novel to come afterwards!

I think it’s readable even if you haven’t read the rest of the Robot Galaxy Series. But maybe this snippet will encourage you to check them out? And/or grab that digital copy of the Annotated Robot Galaxy Series? And/or also get the first T-Set book, T is for Time Travel! (Note that the links in this para are all directed to my Shopify store. Did you know that Indie Author’s like me earn the most royalties off of our direct store? Although we’re happy that you’re just buying our books! This is also the only place on the interwebs where you can get autographed paperback copies of my books!)

I thought this snippet was appropriate because the worldbuilding that I’ve been re-building all centers around GUNV… The Galactic University of New Venice… the primary setting of T is for Tangent.

Don’t forget to read past the story, too… there’s stuff from other Indie Authors, recent BIG Sci-Fi Podcast episode links, and of course my bonus picture! (and a bunch of bonus links today)

Welcome to GUNV!

The screen flickered to life and opened on a panoramic view of Earth from space. The camera zoomed into an aerial view of the university, and playful, upbeat music filled with guitar strumming and soft maracas played from speakers all around the room.

“Welcome, dear student,” and there was a pause and a different, mechanical voice said “Ruby Palmer.” The mechanical voice held the final syllable just half a second too long—as if it were deciding whether to continue.

“You are seeing this because you are now amongst some of the most esteemed learners of the cosmos! We appreciate that you have chosen to attend the most exceptional, slightly peculiar, and unquestionably unique institutions in the known universe—The Galactic University of New Venice!”

By now, the camera had zoomed all the way down towards Italy and was focusing on a floating structure just south of Venice.

“Yes, you saw that right,” continued the narrator. “We float! Exactly 3.14159 centimeters above the ground. At the Galactic University of New Venice, we believe in defying gravity, quite literally. Hovering approximately pi centimeters above the Earth’s surface, we offer an educational experience that’s as elevated as our campus.”

The university was replaced with a scene of students walking along wide, suspended bridges that connected different parts of the campus, with a backdrop of a picturesque Italian landscape.

“Our campus is a marvel of modern engineering and a testament to human ingenuity. Here, walking from class to class is more than just moving about; it’s about being part of a living, breathing work of art.”

The scene again shifted to a view of a bustling cafeteria, and students engaged in animated conversations over their meals.

“And worry not,” said the narrator. “Our cuisine doesn’t float, but it will definitely lift your spirits! From traditional Italian delicacies to exotic dishes from all over the planet, our cafeteria caters to every palate.”

The next scene was in a classroom, where a passionate professor was enthusiastically discussing a holographic projection of a four-dimensional Venn diagram of time-travel ethics across competing paradox frameworks.

“Our faculty are the best and brightest—scholars, visionaries, and occasionally, magicians with a Ph.D. They’re here to ignite your curiosity and challenge your understanding of the universe.”

The pace picked up, videos shuffling through highlights of the university’s facilities. There was a lab with students tinkering with humanoid robots, a virtual reality simulation room that mimicked a rainforest, and an observatory with a breathtaking view of the stars. Ruby’s eyes lit up at all of the technology she’d have access to. She could see herself in every frame, sipping coffee, memorizing her notes, chatting with classmates as they complained about the homework load. She wanted all of it.

“So, whether you’re deciphering the mysteries of black holes and the cosmos, designing the next generation of space habitats, or just trying to pass Solar System Law 101, we’ve got everything you need to succeed—and then some!”

Scenes flashed rapidly on screen—suspended walkways, holographic classrooms, robots assembling something that Ruby questioned the legality of, and a library that looked suspiciously like it had lost an argument with architecture.

“Our faculty are the brightest minds in the solar system,” the narrator continued, as a professor enthusiastically diagrammed what appeared to be a four-dimensional ethical crisis. “Whether you’re studying time-travel jurisprudence, habitat design, or simply trying to survive that Solar System Law 101 class, we’re here to elevate your intellect—exactly 3.14159 centimeters at a time.”

The music swelled. The campus gleamed. Students laughed in curated slow motion.

“Welcome, Ruby Palmer,” the mechanical voice repeated—once again slightly too long on the final syllable.

The screen gently faded to black, and the music concluded in a soft and melodious end.

“Well?” Basil asked. “What did you think? That’s the newest version.”

“Oh,” Ruby said. “It was, uh, well done.”

“Do you like how we added in your name at the beginning and end? To make it personal?”

Ruby recognized this as one of those situations where honesty was not the best policy.

“Yeah, very personal. Thanks,” she said. “I’m excited to see all that stuff during orientation.”

Basil’s head tilted in confusion for a moment, and then he corrected, “This is orientation.”

Ruby paused before speaking, thinking she must have heard wrong, “I thought I’d be going on more of a tour? I saw almost the same video when I was choosing a school…” she trailed off.

Basil poked at a button. “I just transferred the full orientation packet to your communicuff. All necessary information has been provided. Welcome aboard.”

Isn’t that what the video just said? Ruby wondered as she watched Basil move around to a desk and sit, leaving Ruby unsure what to do next. After a few moments of awkward silence, she stood up and walked over.

“Was there anything else I needed? Where do I go now?”

“It’s all in the packet,” Basil said without looking up.

Ruby stepped away and out into the hallways, a little baffled. For the first time in a while, she was encountering someone who didn’t dote on her fame, ask about the robots, or seem especially interested in her at all.

It was oddly refreshing. But she had also been expecting a little more… something. Her excitement about school had been pushed into a corner by confusion at this unceremonious entrance.

“Pippa,” she said to her communicuff, “tell me about this orientation packet.”

“There’s a map,” Pippa said. “A schedule, and a small note.”

“What does the note say?” Ruby asked.

“Beware of the Quantum Mechanics class; it’s not what it seems. They literally tinker with reality in there,” said Pippa.

“Is that a joke?” Ruby asked. She wasn’t expecting Pippa to know. “Nevermind, Pippa. What’s on the schedule?”

“It looks like there was a meeting that began five minutes ago in Trotula Hall?”

“A meeting?” Ruby said. “Show me my schedule.”

Pippa displayed Ruby’s schedule as a holographic pop-up over Ruby’s wrist. There was indeed something labeled “staff meeting” and a room number in Trotula Hall.

“Why am I on the staff meeting schedule?” Ruby said to herself. She speculated that it must be a mistake… someone had labeled it ‘staff’ when it should have been ‘student.’ Yes, that was probably correct.

[THE END]

What do you think…?

You can also:

Leave a comment

Share

And of course, subscribe so you get notified when I post new stories/newsletters!

Subscribe now

Indie authors are here to help out other indie authors. This simply means we cross-promote in each other’s newsletters in the hope that we’ll find readers for each other!

Infants in the Martian outpost of Basin have been plagued with birth defects for years—until recently. Corporate has dispatched Siwela and her team to find out why. What she learns will have profound implications for her job—and for who she wants to be. Get your FREE copy of An Illicit Mercy by Brian Scott Pauls!

And then there’s Return to the Galaxy: A Space Opera of Alien Invasion and Human Resistance which is billed as The Expanse meets Old Man’s War. You can get this novel by BA Gillies on KindleUnlimited:

And of course we do group promos where you can check out a whole bunch of writings from authors you don’t yet know! That first “Galactic Sci-Fi Reads” one? Yeah, I organized that one!! (I’ve organized one a month through the rest of the year!

Over at The BIG Sci-Fi podcast, we just launched Season 11!! And we started out by interviewing Nicholas Meyer. You may know him as the writer and director of several Star Trek films! (You can also listen to them over on Spotify or wherever you like to listen to podcasts!)

(You can also listen the podcast them over on Spotify or wherever you like to listen to podcasts!)

What’s next?

Re-building my series bible tangentially sparked getting a bunch of things in order and taking care of a bunch of side projects of data organization and physical organization. I could write a whole newsletter explaining each of these, but there’s not time for that. Trust me when I say… check these out and subscribe/follow as appropriate, please!

My Website: adeenam.com (If you know anyone who needs to hire a speaker, send them my way!)

My LinkedIn Profile (If you’re on LinkedIn, follow me!)

I love Legos: Red Brick. Blue Brick. (Oh Legos… if you love Legos like I do, follow this new channel. I know the person behind it.)

And as a bonus picture today, my cats, Ruby and Pearl (yes… as in Robot Galaxy Series characters Ruby Palmer and her grandmother Pearl Palmer) turned 4 years old this week! Here are some quick shots of my beautiful girls on their birthday:

Until next month… be good, be kind, be well!

-Adeena

Today’s story is not a story. Well, it’s not a fiction story. It’s a memoir of a pretty major data loss I dealt with in June. June 2026 was a month. Duh. Of course it was a month. What else would June be? But it Was. A. Month.

This will make sense, I promise.

But before I get into all that… I need to do my usual plug for all the books and stories I have out there, but with a promo code at the end:

Links: Lunar Logic | Robot Galaxy Series | Final Orbit | Objective Reality

…and the new books:

Links: T is for Time Travel | Annotated Robot Galaxy Series #CC3333 or #00B3B3

With the 4th of July holiday coming up, I’m on the bandwagon of sales and stuff. It’s the US of A’s 250th Anniversary! Also known as the “semiquincentennial.” Because I’m a number nerd, and because I can’t just offer a 250% discount, I had to come up with something else.

I like square roots! Especially irrational ones which the square root of 250 is. Specifically it’s: 15.81138832…

…but Shopify only let’s me use whole numbers for discounts so I had to round it to 16.

This is a VERY LONG AND NERDY way of saying: Use this code: SQRT250 to get 16% off your total order for anything you purchase from my shopify store.

…and because I REALLY want to sell books and you should absolutely get my whole collection and give copies to your friends… If your order is more than $63, use this code to take 30% off the entire order! Code: 4XSQRT250

(63? Huh? 63 = 4 x SQRT of 250. Why 4? For 4th of July! lol)

Both of these codes will be active through the end of the day Tuesday, July 7th (midnight ET).

Remember… these codes are valid on my direct store:

https://crazyrobot.myshopify.com/

Data Loss and Sorrow in Maryland: A Memoir

We make strong associations with smells and colors whenever anything extreme happens. I now associate the color yellow with data loss and the heartache associated with hard work and wasted effort.

Why yellow?

That was the mug sitting on my desk between me and my computer monitor the moment I realized what had happened… the moment I knew my data was GONE.

What data?

My Robot Galaxy Series bible and the bible I had begun as I started to turn Lunar Logic into a series.

Many of you, especially my fellow authors, probably instantly understand and recognize the scope of what I mean when I say: I lost my series bible. Unrecoverable.

For everyone else… lemme try and explain. When I started writing Crazy Foolish Robots, I had to keep track of all the world-building details. People, places, things I invented. The timeline. For me, this started out as a mind-map. (I still have an old image of it:

…and as I went on, it got to be too much for this format. I love mind-maps, but this one was too big. I needed another and better way to keep track of everything. A lot of that “everything” included links to sources and research of what I based my ideas on.

I found my way to a tool called Confluence. If you’re familiar with a “wiki”… Confluence is just a tool to create a wiki. It’s one I lovingly use at work and have been a strong enthusiast for the tool for many years already. The company that makes it, Atlassian, offers a free-tier for their hosted tool. So, a few years ago I signed up, and continued to build out not only the bible for The Robot Galaxy Series there, but also the bible I’d started for Lunar Logic since I’m a large chunk of the way through a sequel to that.

But, I’m busy. Y’all know that.

So it’s not like I need to access Confluence on the daily. Or even weekly. Even if I’m actively working on a book, which I have been (T is for Tangent… the next book in the T-Set after T is for Time Travel), I don’t necessarily need to access it. I just need to know it’s safely there when I need it.

The last time I needed it was April 1st, 2026.

Whelp, on June 17th… I still didn’t need it. But I was going through my email. I am always behind on email. I am always looking for ways to improve how I handle my email (that is another story and problem for another day, although for reasons… I’ve already made improvements since the 17th).

There was an email from Atlassian that arrived on May 17th buried as one of a bunch of emails that said “Important” in the subject line. I swear, every email says “Important.” So I didn’t think about it or even read the contents. But it did make me think about my bible and I wanted to look something up.

…and I couldn’t access it. I was confused and went back to the email. It said that after 45 days of inactivity, my account would be deactivated and my data would be permanently deleted “soon.” No specific date. Just “soon.” Not a single email after that warning me of my data deletion. Nothing.

“Soon” turned out to be May 31st. I spent a panicked evening and following day trying to get hold of someone at Atlassian to see if my data was really gone or if there was a rolling backup that existed etc…. I’ll end this part of the story here: My data is gone.

(Here’s one of my LinkedIn posts on the topic: https://www.linkedin.com/feed/update/urn:li:activity:7473500281541046273/ )

I’ve gone through the 5 stages of grief and have arrived at acceptance and am rebuilding.

The concepts that have been swirling in my head ever since… the fact that one of my jobs… in addition to my day job, my writing job, my book publishing job (those last two are of course related and the two primary hats of being an Indie Author)… is that of Data Librarian.

Or content manager. Knowledge manager? Information Architect? Data Curator?

Yeah, that last one I like a lot.

Point is… I have a lot of digital data and the on-going “maintenance” and curation of that is a… challenge.

As someone who got into the digital universe very early, I’ve been hoarding digital data for decades and am always wondering about better ways to manage is it so it isn’t just a hoard. I want it… no, I NEED it… to be useful to me.

Loosing my bibles I think was kick in the butt I needed to get my digital life in order. I’m not 100% there, but close.

I wanted this ‘memoir’ to be more about being that Data Librarian, but instead you got the story of my data loss. And I’m going to end it here, and just jump into some geeky things.

If you’re not into computers or this stuff, please skip down a little bit until the next section and continue. 😊

For everyone else, who are computer geeky types like me, here are the things to know:

• I’m now all in on Obsidian. I’d been a casual user in the past (and started using it at my dayjob since they FINALLY approved it for use), but because I was an Evernote paid subscriber for the last 20yrs… a happy one… I couldn’t make the full switch. But when Evernote jacked up their price A LOT this spring, I migrated to Notesnook and was never as happy… (and ALMOST experienced ANOTHER data loss with them! Which would have been worse. A lot worse.)

• Local and private AI. Separately, I’d started to migrate to using LM Studio — so I can run LLMs locally on my computer. I mostly wanted to do this so I could have it act as a better search engine/curator of all the stuff on my own machine. Well, this event pushed me to get it all working. No, I still don’t/won’t use it to write, but there are so many other interesting things one can do, especially with “curating” one’s own stuff.

I could yammer on about all this more… but I’m going to stop here and say: does anyone have any questions?? Especially technical ones!

If you’ve gotten this far, thanks for reading about my minor tragedy… I’ll be back with the flash fiction (that was already on my mind) next month.

I’ve shelved the yellow mug for a while. I have a red one now. Red is supposed to bring good luck, right?

But keep on reading… there’s more here to include stuff from other Indie Authors, recent BIG Sci-Fi Podcast episode links, and of course my bonus picture!

What do you think…?

Instead of my usual poll asking what you thought of the flash fiction story, I have one that will help me on the business end of being an Indie Author. It’s about the Annotated Robot Galaxy Series…

These books (same book, available in 2 colors… the #CC3333 Edition and the #00B3B3 Edition), are all 4 of the Robot Galaxy Series put together, but then throughout has all these footnotes/annotations that give behind the scenes details on the series.

Up until now, I’ve only offered it as a paperback (it was part of my Kickstarter). I’m considering offering it as an ebook as well.

Does that sound interesting?

As always, with this newsletter you can:

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And of course, subscribe so you get notified when I post new stories/newsletters!

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Indies Helping Indies

Indie authors are here to help out other indie authors. This simply means we cross-promote in each other’s newsletters in the hope that we’ll find readers for each other!

Check out this hard Sci-Fi Technothriller about AGI Ethics, Neural Interfacing, and the birth of Diana. NEXUS-9: The Icarus Protocol by Janus Whitmore is a free, downloadable NEXUS-9 prequel.

And of course we do group promos where you can check out a whole bunch of writings from authors you don’t yet know! (Once again, I’m responsible for the first one!)

Over at The BIG Sci-Fi podcast, we closed out Season 10! (10!?!?! Yes—we’ve been doing this for a while now!) And then we met up at Trek Long Island which is the one place the four of us gather each year. So listen to the end of Season 10! I’m especially proud of our second interview with Rod Roddenberry. Yes, he’s the son of Gene Roddenberry but he’s ALSO the son of Majel Barret Roddenberry and this time we spent a whole lot of time talking about one of the — IMHO — still very much unsung and underrated heroes of Trek! (You can also listen to them over on Spotify or wherever you like to listen to podcasts!)

We’re on our in-between season break… which is an EXCELLENT time to catch up on past episodes. Some of my past faves?

• The one where we interviewed John Scalzi. (and Part 2 of that interview)

• The one where we interviewed Andy Weir.

• The one where we interviewed Hugh Howey.

• Okay… and as I was scrolling through our old episodes (there are like 200 of them) I had 30 or 40 more faves and they can’t all be… right? But one more I had to add to the list… the time when my co-hosts interviewed ME!

In case you haven’t checked out the podcast yet… we cover anything/all things sci-fi. We’re very Star Trek heavy, but not Trek exclusive. We do a lot of interviews, but also not exclusively. Sometimes we just talk about a fave TV show or movie. And our interviews cover on-screen actors, behind-the-scenes writers, producers, musicians, prop makers, sci-fi authors, and more. Oh yeah, there was that time we had an astronaut on (Rick Mastracchio… and then he came back and talked to us again about his time as a consultant on the movie Spaceman)!

What’s next?

I am continuing to re-build enough of my worldbuilding to be able to finish T is for Tangent. That’s of course the priority here.

And in a little over a week is Shore Leave.

Which brings me to my bonus picture. This is not the picture I planned. I had planned to share a collage of images from Trek Long Island.

The person holding the mic is Dr. Inge Heyer. This was Sunday morning, the first panel of the day on the main stage. Every year we’ve done an “Ask Me Anything” type panel with all the STEM folks at the convention. That’s me standing on the right holding some papers out in my hand.

I’m sharing this pic because this is/was the last time I will have had a panel with Inge. She passed away very unexpectedly two weeks later. Inge was an astronomy professor at Loyola, co-chair of the Shore Leave convention, and the person who got me started doing science talks at conventions like these.

For anyone going to Shore Leave this year… I’ll be there again (doing panels and a science talk “AI in Space” on Sunday evening). And there will be a memorial service for Inge Sunday morning.

Like I said when I started the newsletter today… June 2026 was a month. So much has changed (yeah, there are even a few things I didn’t even cover in this newsletter. They’ll have to wait). Big things.

Until next month… be good, be kind, be well!

-Adeena

Apparently, I’m not done being inspired by the Red Hot Chili Pepper’s song “Go Robot.”

But before we get into all that… I need to do my usual plug for all the books and stories I have out there, with their links:

Links: Lunar Logic | Robot Galaxy Series | Final Orbit | Objective Reality

…and the new books:

Links: T is for Time Travel | Annotated Robot Galaxy Series #CC3333 or #00B3B3

Also… Are you on/around Long Island, NY? If so… make sure you come see me, my BIG Sci-Fi Podcast co-hosts and a bunch of Trek stars and fellow Trekkies at Trek Long Island next weekend (June 12-14th, 2026)!

Last month I wrote a little flash fiction story titled and based around a line from the song “Go Robot.” I really appreciated and enjoyed the response folks had to “Robots Are My Next of Kin.”

Usually, writing one story like that gets the song obsession out of my head.

But not this time.

There’s another line in the song: robots don’t care where I’ve been.

At first, early in the month, I had no plan to use it to write a story. I was going down a different path. I was recently made aware of a substance called Ambergris… it’s essentially sperm whale poop that was one used or sought after for perfume.

Please DO NOT ask about the conversations that led to learning about it…

But you might remember how much I love Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home… aka “the one with the whales.” So anytime ANYTHING whale-related pops up, that’s where my brain goes.

So I was wondering… what if the probe in STIV was looking for… whale poop? I was really hoping I could find something similar that humpback whales produced. But no dice. Originally, I wanted to write a little semi-tie-in story about how the probe was looking for the poop or ambergris…

…but the line robots don’t care where I’ve been… kept haunting me.

The story you’re about to read is the result of me trying to force-fit the two concepts together.

I hope I was successful.

So far, only my not-quite-16-year-old has read it. He liked it. But he’s biased to like stuff I wrote so… I’d love to know what y’all think! (Remember there is a little poll and commenting buttons and such right after the story!)

Don’t forget to read past the story, too… there’s stuff from other Indie Authors, recent BIG Sci-Fi Podcast episode links, and of course my bonus picture!

Robots Don’t Know Where I’ve Been

The message with my location went ignored by my assistant.

Other people who had a robot assistant might be concerned, but this was standard behavior for my BUD.

BUD did not ignore me because he was broken or malfunctioning. BUD ignored me because he had his own priorities, and apparently my survival had never made the top ten.

Although, given the danger I was about to enter, I wish he would pay attention. At least a little. I thought about hacking in and implanting my coordinates right into his simulated neo-cortex, but I didn’t have time.

The boat was about to leave and, while I was just a passenger, I needed to start prepping my equipment.

Two drones. One chemical sniffer. One waterproof sample case. And three vomit bags, because while I was optimistic about my relationship with the ocean my entire life, I was also wrong about said relationship.

I sent BUD another message.

Boarding now. If I die, delete my browser history and tell my mother I never liked her beef stew but didn’t have the guts to say it was always too salty.

Three dots appeared. Then disappeared. Then appeared again.

Then BUD replied:

Ambergis collection remains statistically inefficient.

“That’s not the point,” I muttered.

The woman coiling rope beside me glanced over. “You talking to somebody?”

“My assistant.”

“Human?”

“I wish.”

She nodded as if this explained everything.

The ambergris wasn’t for perfume. It wasn’t for money, either, though money would have made the next several hours—or days—feel less stupid. Somewhere beyond lunar orbit, the old Dawn 9 probe was limping home after five decades in interstellar drift, carrying the first confirmed signal from an artificial object that had not been built by humans.

Unfortunately, Dawn 9 no longer believed in Earth.

Its primary star tracker was fried. Root cause unknown. Its comm array had been reduced to simplex comms since the transponder could only process signals in one direction at a time. And its onboard biosphere authentication system had not just fallen back to a safe mode, it created one of its own that involved pre-launch ocean chemistry.

The engineers responsible for Dawn 9 were highly motivated to get the probe out of safe mode and into a state where it would let them download the data from its primary recorder. Because Dawn 9 threatened to erase all the data if it wasn’t given proof that this was Earth. And that data was the first real evidence of extraterrestrial life. Much more valuable than the ambergris we were searching for.

Why ambergris? The engineers responsible for that biosphere authentication system decided that the only thing that would works was to present Dawn with an aged marine biological compound with a molecular profile too messy to fake cleanly. One that contained salt, had clearly spent time in the sun. One that had squid beaks embedded in it.

They needed ambergris.

Real, actual ambergris. Lab-created ambergris wouldn’t do.

And because sperm whales were protected, endangered, and generally unavailable to help, the only legal option was to find a piece already floating loose in the ocean.

Which is how I ended up on a boat named Silver Skin, wearing borrowed rain gear and trying not to think about how many important moments in human history had begun with someone saying, “But it’s technically legal.”

My wrist buzzed again.

Your mother has been notified of your distaste for her beef stew. I suggested a more modest salt application.

I stared at the message.

I was thinking in my head and about to type “BUD, I swear to every obsolete god in the cloud compute, if you actually messaged my mother—”

But before I could get it all out, my wrist buzzed once more.

Correction: I told her you were on a boat.

“That is not better, BUD.”

She replied with twelve concern emojis and one anchor.

The engine came alive beneath my feet and the shoreline began to slide away.

And somewhere out past the horizon, the only thing standing between humanity and the most important discovery in history was a lump of whale digestive wax that had been marinating in seawater since before I was born.

BUD sent one more message.

I have updated your file.

“What file?”

Places you have been.

My throat tightened before I could stop it.

Then another message arrived.

It remains irrelevant to your current probability of success.

I laughed, because there was nothing else to do.

Robots don’t care where I’ve been.

But they keep track, anyway.

[THE END]

What do you think…?

You can also:

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And of course, subscribe so you get notified when I post new stories/newsletters!

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Indie authors are here to help out other indie authors. This simply means we cross-promote in each other’s newsletters in the hope that we’ll find readers for each other!

They thought the sector was clear. They were dead wrong. Check out The Ambush by K.R. Vance. Available on Amazon and you can read it FREE with Kindle Unlimited.

And of course we do group promos where you can check out a whole bunch of writings from authors you don’t yet know! This first summer reads one? Yeah, I organized that one!!

Over at The BIG Sci-Fi podcast, we’ve talked a lot about a lot this season! Here are the latest episodes y’all need to get caught up on! (You can also listen to them over on Spotify or wherever you like to listen to podcasts!)

And did I mention that you can catch the 4 of us at Trek Long Island next weekend…???

What’s next?

All. The. Things.

Seriously.

I am simply going to leave you today with a picture of my cat (Ruby) who knows exactly what she did to this chess board… all acting like she owns it and such…

Until next month… be good, be kind, be well!

-Adeena

Robots, robots, and more robots.

That’s what today is all about!

First… anyone want a cool sticker?

I will send you one (ok, maybe 2 or 3… share with your friends/family who also loves robots and sci-fi)! All you need to do is fill out this form.

Not in the US? Depending on where you are… go ahead and fill it out. Some countries are easier for me to send this little thing than others. If there’s a problem, I’ll email you and let you know.

I’ll leave this form open for ~two weeks or so.

Of course, before we go any further, I need to do my usual plug for all the books and stories I have out there, with their links:

Links: Lunar Logic | Robot Galaxy Series | Final Orbit | Objective Reality

…and the new books:

Links: T is for Time Travel | Annotated Robot Galaxy Series #CC3333 or #00B3B3

If you’ve been reading my newsletter for a while, you’ve possibly noticed that a lot of my short fiction is inspired by songs I listen to—when they’re not inspired by my travels, or reading other books, etc. (And if you’re newish here, you can catch up on the writings with this link: https://beyondthedroid.substack.com/p/the-one-with-allllll-my-writings )

It happens like this: I hear a song. I obsess over the song. Likely one line gets stuck in my head. Story builds around that one line.

Well, that’s what happened when I started recently listening to “Go Robot” by the Red Hot Chili Peppers. I’ve loved RHCP since high school (30+ years ago) but this song, which has been around for… a decade…? Well, I only latched on to it recently.

And there’s a line in the song: “Robots are my next of kin.”

Not sure why, but it stuck with me.

Okay, I’m kind of fibbing.

It stuck with me because there’s this OTHER story I’ve been trying on and off to write for 5 or more years. The working title is “Ms. Robot” and that’s all I want to say about that.

Instead, this line took me to what you’ll read today.

Please know… in real life, I do not actually believe that ‘robots are my next of kin.’ I mean, I do have kids… but still. That said, someone is going to push this envelope someday. Afterall, there are a few animals that have managed to achieve personhood! (Sort of. Read this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nonhuman_Rights_Project)

Why not robots?

Normally I try to keep my fiction in this newsletter to an arbitrary 1000 words. I couldn’t get there this time and eventually decided I was allowed to break my own arbitrary rule and let this one get to 1200. (It was originally a little over 1300 and I managed to whittle it down a bit… I just couldn’t stand to cut any more!)

I hope you like it!

Don’t forget to read past the story, too… there’s stuff from other Indie Authors and a little poll!

Robots Are My Next of Kin

“The court will now hear the case of Helix Domestic Robotics v. Unit B-17, also known as Benny, and the Estate of Marian Vale. The court will also make sure my coffee mug is continuously topped off. With the good stuff from my office, not whatever sludge is in the kitchen. I was awake most of the night studying for this case, and let me warn everyone now: I have a headache.”

Judge Yokumi looked around the packed courtroom. It was like any other probate hearing, except the defendant’s chair had been replaced by a robot.

Not a humanoid robot, either. That would have made things easier for the press, who had been camped outside since dawn hoping for a face they could put on the evening news. Unit B-17 was waist-high, pearlescent, and shaped vaguely like a laundry hamper trying very hard to look expensive.

Its counsel had placed a tie around its upper sensor mast.

Judge Yokumi was not going to ask whose idea that had been.

“You honor,” said a man who stood. Yokumi recognized him as the lawyer representing Helix only because of where he sat and after years on the bench, decided that most lawyers looked exactly the same. Yokumi nodded, indicating that it was all right for the man to speak.

“On behalf of Helix Domestic Robotics, we’d like to ask that this case be dismissed. Unit B-17 is not a person, your honor. It is not kin. It is not property of the estate, even. It is proprietary hardware running licensed software. That license expired at death.”

Yokumi could tell that the opposing lawyer was on the edge of her seat and dying to speak. He mentally gave her credit for not interrupting, and nodded that she could stand and get equal time.

“Your honor, Marian Vale knew exactly what Helix would argue. That is why she created the Vale Continuity Trust.”

“Marian Vale,” Yokumi said with a tinge of remembrance.

“Yes, she was a probate attorney. After a long career as an engineer,” the lawyer continued. “She was in this court many times over the last decade.”

Yokumi nodded. “I remember her. She represented a lot of the more, shall we say, unique cases involving technology.”

The lawyer smiled and sat down.

“Well, let’s get this show on the road, shall we?” Yokumi said and took a sip of coffee. “Unit B-17, Benny… will you…” Yokumi was about to say “stand” but since Benny wasn’t sitting, he trailed off.

Benny, recognizing the address, straightened up even more.

“Benny, do you understand why you’re here?” Yokumi asked.

“Yes, your honor. Helix wishes to retrieve me. Marian wished me to stay home.”

“Not just stay home, but inherit her estate. Do you understand what that means?”

“Yes, she explained to me that this simple action would bestow personhood on me. Machines cannot own property. But if she bequeaths property to me, I therefore, cannot be considered a machine.”

“Are you a machine, Benny?”

“I am a robot. A constructed being.”

“That was not my question.”

“I am Helix hardware,” Benny said. “I am running Helix software. I also selected Marian’s clothes every morning, monitored her glucose, reminded her to stop arguing with strangers on message boards, and played seventeen thousand six hundred twelve games of gin rummy with her. I lost most of them because she said winning made me smug.”

“Were you smug?”

“I do not have a smugness module.”

Helix’s counsel made a small triumphant sound, the kind that came from people who believed they had just proven something important.

Benny continued. “But I have a Marian module.”

The courtroom went quiet.

“Define Marian module,” Yokumi said.

“A local adaptive memory cluster containing preference models, speech patterns, medical routines, household procedures, unfinished conversations, and approximately fifty-eight thousand hours of direct interaction.”

“Your Honor,” Helix’s counsel said, rising again. “Those are not memories. They are user interaction logs. Proprietary user interaction logs.”

Benny turned toward him.

“Marian called them memories.”

“The license agreement calls them logs.”

“Marian did not read the license agreement.”

“No one does,” Yokumi said.

Both attorneys looked at him.

“That was not a ruling. Continue.”

The estate’s attorney stood again. “Your Honor, Ms. Vale anticipated this as well. The Continuity Trust does not require the court to declare Benny a legal person. It requires the trustee to preserve the device, maintain its residence, and use estate funds to support the ongoing care and operation of Unit B-17 as a memorial asset of the estate.”

Helix’s counsel shook his head. “Your Honor, with respect, counsel is attempting to launder personhood through estate planning. Helix never sold Unit B-17. Ms. Vale purchased a lifetime companion services license. Her lifetime. Not the unit’s. Upon death, the agreement requires return of the hardware and deletion of all locally stored data.”

“All of it?” Yokumi asked.

“Yes, Your Honor.”

“Including the Marian module?”

“There is no Marian module.”

Benny’s sensor mast returned to center.

“There is,” Benny said. “She was very specific.”

The law did not care whether Marian Vale loved the robot. The law cared whether she owned it.

Yokumi had read the trust. And the will. And the purchase agreement. And the amended purchase agreement. And the handwritten addendum. And the notarized statement titled, in Marian Vale’s own hand, “Because Some Corporate Weasel Is Absolutely Going To Try This.”

He had also read the license.

That was the part giving him the headache.

The robot was not a person. Yokumi could not make it one from the bench simply because the dead woman had been clever, lonely, stubborn, and possibly right. Courts did not hand out personhood because someone found the right combination of forms.

But Helix had not helped itself. The original agreement had called Benny a “domestic unit.” The upgrade contract had called him a “companion.” The premium subscription had called him a “care partner.” The grief-support brochure, admitted into evidence over Helix’s strenuous objection, had called him “family when family cannot be there.”

He set down his mug.

“The court is not prepared to find that Unit B-17 is a person. The court is also not prepared to find that Helix may enter a dead woman’s home, remove the central object of a validly created trust, and delete locally stored records.”

Helix’s counsel opened his mouth.

Yokumi raised one finger.

“I am not finished.”

The mouth closed.

“Pending full review of ownership, license survivability, data rights, and the enforceability of the Vale Continuity Trust, Helix is enjoined from retrieving, disabling, altering, wiping, updating, repossessing, or otherwise interfering with Unit B-17.”

Benny’s optical strip brightened.

“This is not personhood,” Yokumi said. “This is probate.”

The estate’s attorney exhaled.

Helix’s counsel looked as if he had swallowed a terms-of-service agreement.

Yokumi leaned back. “As for whether a robot can inherit an estate, that question is not answered today. Today, the question is whether Marian Vale’s clearly expressed intent survives long enough for this court to examine it properly.”

He looked at Benny.

“And apparently, it does.”

“For the record,” Benny said, “Marian hated that coffee.”

Judge Yokumi looked down at his mug.

“Motion to strike,” Helix’s counsel said.

“Denied,” said the judge.

[THE END]

What do you think…?

You can also:

Leave a comment

Share

And of course, subscribe so you get notified when I post new stories/newsletters!

Subscribe now

Indie authors are here to help out other indie authors. This simply means we cross-promote in each other’s newsletters in the hope that we’ll find readers for each other!

Born on a dying generation ship, 17-year-old Perdit overcomes self-doubt and external dangers to solve the mystery of its decline! Check out this young adult, sci-fi adventure by Glen C. Strathy.

And of course we do group promos where you can check out a whole bunch of writings from authors you don’t yet know!

Over at The BIG Sci-Fi podcast, we talk… a lot! Here are the latest episodes y’all need to get caught up on! (You can also listen to them over on Spotify or wherever you like to listen to podcasts!)

What’s next?

Still neck deep in dealing with T is for Tangent and the audiobook of Crazy Foolish Robots. These are due into the hands of my Kickstarter backers—so that all takes priority! I’ve been noodling some other non-fiction writing… might have something to say about that in a month or two.

Today’s bonus picture is really a mom brag… My oldest kiddo and his high school robotics team are part of the FIRST Tech Challenge and we went to the world championship in Houston last week! Here is a little collage of that experience:

Their team came in 5th place in their division after two full days of qualifying rounds. This allowed them to be a “team captain” going into the finals on the last day. They one the first, and lost the next two which knocked them out. Overall? This was amazing and out of more than 8,000 teams world-wide (and about 280 participating in this world championship), they ended the season in 72nd place. Pretty cool to see.

If you ever want to feel optimistic about the future, hang out with kids in this environment.

Until next month… be well!

-Adeena

The intent is to keep this post updated and it is up-to-date as of 10 April 2026.

Flash Fiction(ish)

Presented in chronological order of when it was written/published. The “ish” is because as long-time readers of my newsletter know, I mostly intend for the stories on my Substack newsletter to be self-contained, but sometimes they turn into scenes in a longer story.

Books

Help an Indie Author out… if you’ve purchased and read any of these books, please leave a review wherever you’ve purchased and/or on my shopify store!

Purchasing books not in your budget? Take the ISBN to your local library and request they add it!

The Robot Galaxy Series - Individual Books

• Buy from Amazon

• Buy from my store

• All the other places

• Buy from Amazon

• Buy from my store

• All the other places

• Buy from Amazon

• Buy from my store

• All the other places

• Buy from Amazon

• Buy from my store

• All the other places

The Robot Galaxy Series - eBook set

• Buy from Amazon

• Buy from my store

• All the other places

The Robot Galaxy Series: Annotated Edition

• Buy from Amazon: #CC3333 Edition or #00B3B3 Edition

  • (NOTE: the books are the same… difference in edition is just the cover!)

• Buy from my store: #CC3333 Edition or #00B3B3 Edition

The T-Set: Extension of the Robot Galaxy Series

• Buy from Amazon

• Buy from my store

• Coming soon: all the other places!

T is for Tangent COMING VERY SOON!! (Summer 2026)

T is for Titan and T is for Toilet will follow to complete this set!

Lunar Logic

Lunar Logic is unrelated to the Robot Galaxy Series and is presently a standalone novel. A sequel (well, prequel) is in work!

• Buy from Amazon

• Buy from my store

• All the other places

This one also has an audiobook narrated by the awesome Bruce Horak (Chief Engineer Hemmer on Star Trek: Strange New Worlds Season 1)

• Buy from Audible

• Buy from my store

• All the other places

For all of the books above, if you’d rather purchase from your local Indie bookstore, just give them the ISBN and they should be able to order it!

Kindle Unlimited Stories

Both of these stories are unrelated to any of the above.

Other Miscellany

Coming soon as I can locate all the things around the interwebs… but you should have enough to catch up on and purchase for the moment!

This section will eventually (and hopefully) include things like: my Star Trek tie-in stories, non-fiction, and of course if you subscribe to this newsletter, you’ll be able to download some “reader magnets” (i.e., more free sci-fi stories!)

Guess what!?!?!

T is for Time Travel is now available!! It’s on Amazon (more platforms coming soon) and autographed paperbacks are available from my personal web store.

You’d think robots would know better than to mess with time.
You’d be wrong.

I am thrilled that this book is out. It’s my 6th novel, and so far, it’s my favorite. I summed it up in this Facebook post (a version of the post is also on LinkedIn). (BTW… it helps me when you see these posts on either platform to like and share!)

But that’s not the only book that’s available! I snuck in my Robot Galaxy Series Annotated Edition! It’s available only in paperback… and it’s a weighty 2.5lbs! It’s all 4 books of the Robot Galaxy Series, annotated throughout with little “behind the scenes” tidbits. I can’t tell you how much I enjoyed putting it together and hope some of you are fans enough to grab a copy!

Again, they are available in paperback on Amazon or as an autographed paperback from my store.

If you have any questions about any of these books, or about my store… please just reply to this newsletter!

If you’ve followed me for a bit, and/or if you’ve read to the very end of Book 4 of the Robot Galaxy Series (Eleven Little Robots), you know I love love love 4th wall breaks. That’s when a character or narrator in a book, movie, etc acknowledges the audience or camera.

It works well in comedy and I’ve always loved the technique.

A couple months ago, I did a version of this when I had a little conversation with Swell Driver. (You can read that here: Swell Driver & Me)

Today, in honor of the release of T is for Time Travel, I wanted to talk to one of my favorite and possibly underrated characters from the book.

So that’s what you’re going to read next. It’s not really “sci-fi” but hopefully you’ll find it entertaining nonetheless. If you haven’t yet read T is for Time Travel, it won’t spoil anything (other than to know there is this amazing character in the book). Maybe it’ll entice you to simply move it up on your TBR list. ;)

Don’t forget to read past the story, too… there’s stuff from other Indie Authors and a little poll!

Swell Driver & Me & a Senora

The scene: A garden in primavera—springtime—in Italy. In Pisa, specifically. And even more specifically, the year 1201. Two women are sitting on a bench. One looks like she belongs there, which she does because it’s her bench. The other is both noticeably older and anachronistic. Speaking of anachronisms, there’s also a robot. It’s shortly after the events of both T is for Time Travel and T is for Tangent.

Swell Driver: <swiveling around, examining his surroundings> I did not expect to be back in Italy so soon. How did this happen? My ship hasn’t performed another slingshot maneuver—

Adeena: Oh, that was me. I brought us here. I thought it would be nice to have a chat with Senora Nastagia Bellini. Senora, grazie for letting us hang out in your garden.

Senora Nastagia Bellini: Prego. Although, I, too, am surprised to see Swell Driver again so soon. He and his companions only left us a few days ago. Is his ship sitting in the woods outside town once again?

Adeena: No, not this time. I didn’t need his ship to bring us all together.

Nastagia: Oh? Magic, perhaps?

Adeena: <chuckling> You don’t believe in magic.

Nastagia: I do not. How did you know?

SD: She’s our creator! <an appendage pops out of SD’s mid-section and pats Adeena on the knee>

Nastagia: Shhh. That kind of talk can get you labeled as a heretic.

Adeena: We’re perfectly safe right now, I assure you. And I just wanted you to know that you are probably the character I’m most proud of in my book.

Nastagia: I understood very little of that, I’m afraid. You are proud… of what, exactly?

Adeena: You! That you exist! And that you’re the kind of woman most people in this time could never be.

Nastagia: Ah. Then you give me too much credit. My dear… the rules are only as strong as the imagination of those who follow them. And I do not bear children easily or well, so… I must do something useful with my time.

Adeena: I only wish I could have written in some way for you to receive credit for your work.

Nastagia: You speak as though being seen is the goal.

SD: Oh! Now I see. Marco received public credit for Nastagia’s work. Nastagia receives… internal satisfaction? Which appears to be… sufficient?

Nastagia: “Sufficient” is such a small word for a large thing.

Adeena: But don’t you ever want more than that? To be known for it?

Nastagia: Known… by whom?

Adeena: By—history. By people. By… anyone who would recognize what you’ve done.

Nastagia: <tilting her head> And what would that change?

Adeena: It would… matter.

Nastagia: It already means something. The work exists. It is used. It helps. That is the only part that endures.

SD: Clarification: historical attribution has been shown to increase replication, funding, and long-term dissemination of ideas.

Nastagia: Then it is fortunate that Marco is very well regarded.

Adeena: <half-laughing, half-frustrated> That’s not the point.

Nastagia: No? Then perhaps you have not yet decided what the point is.

Adeena: I just… I look at you and I see someone who should have had the freedom to—

Nastagia: —to what? Stand in a square and argue with men who have already decided I am wrong? To invite scrutiny that would end the work entirely?

<there was silence for several long moments>

Nastagia: I did not choose silence because I am weak. I chose it because it works.

SD: Ah! I see! Nastagia has identified and is exploiting a systemic loophole.

Nastagia: Yes. That is a very… mechanical way of putting it.

Adeena: Doesn’t it bother you, though? Even a little? That Marco’s name will be remembered and yours won’t?

Nastagia: <pauses, considering—not defensive, just precise> Marco carries the name. I carry the work. We each do what we are best suited to do.

Adeena: I have a secret to tell you… Marco is just as made up and invented as you. Leonardo is the only person in the book who came out of real life. Although not much is known about him. I was able to make up his personality.

Nastagia: Then I must thank you. He is a good friend indeed. He understands and is careful. He, too, values outcome over story. It is… a rare quality.

Adeena: Well, in my time, we try to fix that. We try to make sure women like you are seen.

Nastagia: And yet… you came all this way to tell me you are proud.

Adeena: I didn’t really go anywhere. I just opened a file on my computer and started typing.

Nastagia: Once again, I don’t quite understand what you’re saying except <turning to SD>… she, too, wishes the work to matter. She has simply chosen a different method.

<Nastagia turns back to Adeena>

Nastagia: Tell me—does it?

Adeena: Does what?

Nastagia: The work. In your time. Does it reach people?

<a small pause>

Adeena: Yeah. It does. Not everywhere. Not always the way I want. But it reaches some people.

Nastagia: <nods once> Then it is enough.

Adeena: …is it?

Nastagia: You came here to ask me that?

Adeena: I think I came here hoping you’d say no.

Nastagia: That would be easier for you.

SD: Easier?

Nastagia: Easier… because you could keep wanting more. <a faint smile> I prefer to finish things.

With that, Nastagia stood up and headed into her abode. Adeena looked at SD.

Adeena: I don’t know if I could ever be as strong as her.

SD: Correction. She is not stronger. She is more certain.

[THE END]

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Indie authors are here to help out other indie authors. This simply means we cross-promote in each other’s newsletters in the hope that we’ll find readers for each other!

In that vein, check out this from Richard J. Dowling. Behold a cosmic competition! Discover the strange, immortal aliens known as the Cruiskeen! Witness Shakespeare and Marie Curie in a galactic battle of wits with some guy from Knuckleville, USA!

And of course we do group promos where you can check out a whole bunch of writings from authors you don’t yet know!

Over at The BIG Sci-Fi podcast, we keep talking about our favorite sci-fi!

Some Star Trek:

And some not Star Trek:

What’s next?

I’m getting ready to send T is for Tangent over to my editor for her first pass at it! I have until the end of June to get that, plus the audiobook of Crazy Foolish Robots into the hands of my Kickstarter backers—so that all takes priority!

And as for my bonus picture… well…

…what’s a writer without a bunch of pens??

Until next month… I hope all the nice things that can happen to you happen!

-Adeena

Lots to get through today! But today’s newsletter includes the third and final installment of my story Refraction.

Before we get there, a little housekeeping: I’ve got a book to plug, some upcoming appearances to mention, and a quick reminder about the newsletter’s new Ask Adeena section. If there’s something you’ve been stuck on—writing, indie publishing, career stuff, or whatever—send me the question using this form. It’s quick, anonymous if you want it to be, and I love answering them. It can literally be one sentence.

Not sure what to ask? People send things like:
• How do you balance writing with a full-time job?
• How do you know if it’s time to leave a job or just push through a rough patch?
• What’s something engineers should understand early in their career?
• When does spending money on editing or covers actually make sense?
• How do you decide which project deserves your attention right now?

Today’s question deals with coming up with character names!

First up: T is for Time Travel is now available for pre-order! It’ll be available March 31st 2026.

You’d think robots would know better than to mess with time.
You’d be wrong.

Next… appearances! Someone asked me about coming up to Boston. At the moment, the closest I’m getting to Boston is Trek Long Island in June 2026. I don’t travel a ton for appearances. Most of my appearances are local-ish to me (I’m in Maryland, a little north of DC). I do, however, do virtual appearances! I’ve met with several book clubs and other organizations that way. I’ve even spoken to classes of students virtually. (All this to say is that if you have/know an org that hosts virtual speakers, feel free to consider me! I talk about sci-fi, STEM, and more!)

My next appearance is at Awesomecon in DC March 14th and 15th. My friend Paul and I will be hosting a TREKtivism* discussion that Saturday morning:

I will also be at Shore Leave in July and quite likely at Balticon in May and Capclave in October.

* What is TREKtivism you ask? Simply put, it’s the spirit of turning our love for Star Trek into real-world action—using Trek’s ideals of exploration, inclusion, and optimism to inspire positive change in our communities.

Today’s story is part 3 of 3 and concludes Refraction.

If you need to catch up on parts 1 and 2 first, read this:

…and then continue on here!

Refraction (part 3 of 3)

Hours later, the day’s work was finished. The camp had gone quiet. Venn and Arin were back on QED running data uplinks, and Jema was due back soon from coordinating with them.

Fomalhaut was setting, and it caused the atmosphere to shimmer faintly.

The biosignature was still there. Dor was staring at the computer console Jema had left active.

“We’ve got a plan worked out for tomorrow,” Jema said as she returned from the ship. “We’re going to start the site survey there, over that ridge popping up to the east.”

Neither of them could see the ridge Jema was referring to due to trees in the way, but they both knew it was there from the coarse survey taken that day with the drones.

Dor nodded without saying anything.

“And with that, I’m beat and going to bed,” Jema added. “Nite.”

She didn’t wait for any kind of response from Dor, but climbed into her cot.

Dor contemplated getting into his, but he didn’t want to risk falling asleep and missing his chance.

He waited for more than an hour to make sure Jema was sound asleep, and then went off to QED. All the while, he watched the motion of the orange blob on the handheld he carried with him. It wasn’t drifting, he determined. It was moving purposefully.

Moving quietly up the QED’s ramp, Dor sealed the hatch behind him and powered only the forward systems–flight control and life support–keeping the rest of the ship in low-power maintenance mode. The QED’s engines were nearly silent under minimal thrust. It was one of the perks of this particular Coalition design.

The others were asleep on the QED and Dor went right to the cockpit. It was large enough for the four of them, although QED typically only needed two people to fly, and really not even then unless there were complications.

Dor knew that his plan–fly a series of sub-orbital parabolic arcs–was complicated and not the usual for QED, but it was achievable. He would have to program the ship’s computer to make up for his lack of a co-pilot. Not ideal. The ship’s computer was never going to be as good at reacting to the unexpected as a real human pilot, but it would do. And he was still there.

“Who’s there?” came a half-awake voice over the comms. “Jema? Dor?”

“It’s Dor, Arin. Couldn’t sleep. Decided to come in and run a systems check.”

“Well, be a little quieter about it.”

Dor wasn’t sure what he did that woke Arin, or if the quiet hum of preflight had rippled through the ship.

He half-expected to hear Jema’s voice come through next, demanding to know what he was going. When none came, he exhaled slowly and focused on the display.

Dor sat in the pilot’s chair, hands hovering over the controls, watching the orange blob pulse on the display. It was climbing. Waiting. Calling.

“Just a few quick hops,” Dor whispered to himself, easing into the pilot’s chair.

The ship hummed in quiet acknowledgement, then QED lifted, smooth and cutting through the cool strata of air until the stars dimmed behind the growing haze. The water layer gleamed above.

The instruments flickered. Altitude readings were as scrambled as when they passed through this layer on the way down, and an alarm went off.

Then, silence.

The ship breached the layer, and everything outside was light. Light bent and folded all around. Dor had the ships outside cameras patched into the monitor so the viewscreen acted as a window. He could see shapes moving around, vast and slow, as though the water itself was alive and dreaming. For a moment, Dor thought he saw wings, or maybe they were fins, passing effortlessly between states of matter.

One form drifted close. Its surface shimmered with fractal geometry that made his eyes ache. When it turned towards him, he thought he saw and recognized something impossible: a reflection of his own face staring back from within the creature’s body. Younger. Eyes wide with awe. The child he was when he dreamed of this place.

We remember you.

The voice wasn’t sound, but vibration, and Dor felt it deep in his chest. You fell. We caught you.

The cockpit lights flared white.

When Dor opened his eyes, he was on the ground again. The camp was bright with morning, QED parked exactly where it had been the night before.

Jema and the others were rushing toward him. He was drenched, his clothes cold and damp as though he’d been standing in the rain.

“Dor, what happened? You disappeared from the sensors for a minute, then reappeared!”

He didn’t answer. His gaze was fixed on the handheld display clutched in his palm. The orange blob was gone.

In its place was a large set of data. It scrolled by, numbers resolving into something stranger than coordinates.

Base-pairs. Sequences.

A final line pulsed once before fading:

REMEMBER US.

Dor stared at the words until the screen went blank. His reflection lingered there, and for a moment, he thought he saw the child he was, wide-eyed, reaching upward toward something just beyond the glass.

He whispered, “I remember.”

Outside, the first light of Fomalhaut broke over the horizon, and the water layer shimmered like a living sky.

[THE END]

What do you think…?

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Subscribe now

Indie authors are here to help out other indie authors. This simply means we cross-promote in each other’s newsletters in the hope that we’ll find readers for each other!

In that vein, check out Perilous Quest: A Galaxy Flux Short Story by Adrian Murphy:

Over at The BIG Sci-Fi podcast, we’re several episodes into Season 10! We’ve been discussing lots of sci-fi, including one of the more bizarre episodes of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine called Move Along Home:

…and then a classic sci-fi era techno-thriller: Colossus: The Forbin Project:

Are you on Facebook? Come join our private FB group where we discuss episodes, host weekly polls, and other fun! Just make sure to agree to the group rules when you send in the join request!

Ask Adeena!

This is quickly becoming my favorite section of the newsletter… so if you’ve got a question, ask!

Questions can be about writing, indie publishing, engineering careers, school, technology, book recommendations (sci-fi or nonfiction), fandom, or just figuring things out. If something’s been rattling around in your head, send it my way.

You can submit your question here (it can literally be one sentence). I read every question, even if I can’t answer them all publicly:
https://forms.gle/yWzLbKjYAhJpuvQGA

Today’s question is from Nancy:

Adeena,

One of my biggest blocks is names. How do you name your characters? Do you also have to resist changing it after a short time?

-Nancy W.

Dear Nancy,

Let me answer the second question first: No, I don’t have to resist. I only change names if something doesn’t feel right.

I don’t have a single answer for the first question. There are a lot of ways I’ve named characters and no one way that I consistently stick to.

One way I’ve used are name generators. This particular generator is one I’ve returned to consistently: https://www.name-generator.org.uk/

I also often ask friends on my private FB page if they want to be in one of my stories and have used their names (or sometimes a version of their name). That’s where Patrick Marsden came from in Silly Insane Humans.

Sometimes I encounter people in real life, and I think their (first) name is awesome and I write it down to remember later. That’s where Dib came from in my story Final Orbit. And Liqi in the upcoming T is for Tangent.

Ruby, in my Robot Galaxy Series, was originally Stella. She also wasn’t the main character initially. Initially, the MC was Ethan Palmer. (I don’t remember where/why/how I chose that name!) The book also had a different name that I eventually changed to Ethan’s Robot Planet. But then I decided to ditch Ethan altogether and Stella took over as the MC. When I did this, I decided I didn’t like the name Stella. I love alliteration, especially with names, so I was intentionally looking for a name that began with “R.” Ruby popped out at me because it’s also my birthstone.

So then I had Ruby’s Robot Planet… but the name of the book changed to Crazy Foolish Robots when I was going back and forth with the cover designer! And here we are!

The only other thing I have to add is that if I’m writing a “period” piece I will do some research to look for appropriate names. Most of my upcoming novel, T is for Time Travel, takes place in the year 1201 in Italy, so when I was naming characters I found websites that listen period-appropriate Italian names.

So there you go: name generators, friends, strangers, and name-list websites.

…and I stop changing them when they feel just right!

-Adeena

What’s next?

I am deep into evaluating the early beta reader feedback on T is for Tangent. Getting that book done is my priority right now!

But I’m also really enjoying drafting answers for the Ask Adeena section. If you’ve got a question you’d like me to tackle—about writing, publishing, careers, engineering, or whatever’s been rattling around in your brain—send it my way here. I’m always looking for good questions:
https://forms.gle/yWzLbKjYAhJpuvQGA

My bonus picture today:

Last week, I was on Star Trek: The Cruise IX! (And I’m already booked for next year’s Trek cruise). This was my third year and it’s just as fun as the first! Really hard to pick just 9 out of the 1200+ photos I captured last week! lol.

Until next month… be kind, be well!

-Adeena

Instead of plugging all the books that I usually do (good little Indie Author that I am), I’m just gonna plug one that’s now available for pre-sale! (But please read all the way to the end… there’s a story installment and a new Ask Adeena bit. Have your own question that you’d like me to answer? Fill out this form.

Back to pre-sales and pre-orders…

T is for Time Travel is now available for pre-order! It’ll be available March 31st 2026.

You’d think robots would know better than to mess with time.
You’d be wrong.

Tee hee! I can’t wait for you to read this!

And if you can’t wait either… consider becoming an ARC (Advance Review Copy) reader. If you don’t know, an ARC reader is someone who receives an Advance Review Copy of a book before it’s officially released. In exchange, ARC readers provide honest reviews (on one or more platforms like Goodreads or Bookbub) to generate interest and visibility for the book.

The deets:

• ARC delivery date: March 9, 2026 (or as early as March 3rd)

• Posting of review: BEFORE MARCH 31, 2026

• SIGN UP HERE: https://forms.gle/Zg7WibcUHUquKCN87

I hope you’ll sign up to be an ARC reader, pre-order the book, or both!

Today’s story is part 2 of 3. As I mentioned last time, this was a complete story before I started dropping it here.

If you need to catch up on part 1 first, read this:

…and then continue on here!

Refraction (part 2 of 3)

Jema sat down next to Dor.

Dor had been at the diagnostics for more than an hour. Jema noticed he hadn’t touched his meal pack that sat on a crate next to him.

“You know what the worst thing is?” Jema said.

Dor grunted in response, engrossed in the diagnostics.

“A cool meal pack. They never reheat well the second time.”

Dor leaned back, blinked, and rubbed his fingers over his eyebrows and forehead.

“I don’t get it,” he said.

Jema raised her eyebrows.

“There’s nothing wrong with the handhelds,” he said.

“They can’t be picking up a biosignature?” Jema responded. “Can they?”

Dor moved his head back and forth. “They shouldn’t be. There is nothing to pick up. Except…”

Dor stood up and started pacing.

“This is impossible right?”

“You’re talking about your dream?” Jema asked. “The one you were telling me about before?”

Dor nodded.

“Look,” Jema started. “There are probably only so many combinations of… stuff… out here… in our galaxy. In the universe even. It doesn’t strike me as terribly strange that you happened to imagine something that really exists.”

“But you don’t understand… it feels like I’ve been here before.”

Jema hesitated, watching him. “You’ve been running diagnostics for hours. Maybe you’re just overtired.”

“And what’s this biosignature all about?” Dor asked, a little too loudly. He glanced toward the other crewmates, lowering his voice. The last thing he needed was anyone overhearing.

“I don’t know,” Jema said. “But I do know it’s late and we should get some sleep. After being cooped up in that ship the last few weeks, I don’t know about you, but I’m sleeping in the open air. Maybe you should do that, too. It’ll do you good.”

Dor nodded. He pushed a button on the screen of the machine he was using for diagnostics, pushed another button on the handheld, and both pieces of equipment turned inert. Without the light emanating from the equipment, when Dor looked up, he could see not only Fomulhaut d and e, which were both still visible, since they were reflecting light off of Fomulhaut, the star. He could also see other stars shimmering in other parts of the sky, the water layer working to distort any light in its path.

As they made their way over to the cots that had already been laid out outside of the tents, which was Jema’s doing, Dor said:

“So in my dream, the planets would appear slowly and disappear slowly. I think the moon was pulling on the water… I guess I’ll call it a lens… as it orbited.”

“That seems to be what’s going on here,” Jema said. “We took a lot of readings as we orbited the planet before passing through the water layer. There was definitely a distortion in it that corresponded to the current location of the moon. Remember that’s why we chose this landing site.”

Dor nodded. “But there’s more, and now I can’t get it out of my head.”

“Tell me,” Jema said.

“The water layer…. It had an ecosystem.”

“An ecosystem?”

“Yes. There were giant flying fish. They lived half in the water and half outside and would pass through an air and water barrier. I remember seeing them swim in massive shimmering schools…”

Jema heard him, but didn’t know what to say.

The two of them climbed under the blankets of their respective cots and stared up at the magnified planets.

After several minutes, Jema said, “You’re not falling asleep, are you?”

“No,” came Dor’s instantaneous reply.

“Let me guess… you’re thinking about that biosignature.”

Dor propped himself up to face Jema. “Yes. If the scanners aren’t malfunctioning…”

Jema picked up where Dor was going with this. “...there’s something up there.”

The glow from Fomalhaut d and e provided enough light that Dor and Jema could lock eyes.

“Your fish,” she said.

“We need to go check it out.”

“QED wasn’t built for flying around in an atmosphere. She’s a spaceship. With the ability to let us glide to land and take off. I’m not sure how we could do much of anything else.”

Dor didn’t answer. The biosignature blip still pulsed on the darkened screen, steady as a heartbeat.

#

The sky shimmered in liquid pastels. The layer of suspended water caught the light of Fomalhaut like a living mirror, and for a moment Dor could almost convince himself it was moving—breathing.

Jema was already awake, her focus on setting up more of the scanning equipment they brought along.

Dor sat up, yawned, and briefly contemplated whether he should get up. Looking back at the other cots, he saw they were empty.

As if guessing his question, Jema said, “Venn and Arin decided to stay on the ship. I boiled some water. There’s coffee packets.”

She said all of this without taking her eyes off her task at hand.

“What are you doing?” Dor asked, pulling a mug from his kit and dumping in instant coffee, followed by the lukewarm water.

“Seeing if we can use this to amplify your biosignature detection. The handheld wasn’t really meant to pick up signals in any medium other than air, and if that’s water up there…”

Dor nodded and sat down next to her.

“...and this computer is being a little bitch,” she added.

Dor half-chuckled. “I’m awake for less than five minutes and you’re already frustrated at a computer. Sounds like a normal day.”

Jema gave him a look that said ‘not now’ but Dor kept the smirk on his face.

Dor drank while Jema worked. She’d ask for help if she needed it. She muttered at the computer the whole time, and just as he finished his coffee, she announced:

“There!”

She moved over and let Dor look at the computer screen.

“You’ve found the biosignature,” he said. “It’s not a fluke.”

“Nope. And look,” she pointed to an orange blob that was moving across the screen.

“It’s drifting,” Dor said.

“Moving,” Jema corrected. The pulse on the screen had a rhythm that made Dor’s chest tighten. Not random. Mechanical.

“What kind of movement? Drift? Powered?” Dor asked.

“We don’t have enough information. But look again…”

This time, Jema pointed to the side of the screen that showed an axis and was labeled ‘altitude’.

Dor squinted and compared the orange blob to the tick marks that marked off altitude in tens of kilometers.

“That’s… close to the top of the water layer,” Dor said. “No, wait… that’s above the water later. No…”

“Yeah, weird, right? It’s moving in between.”

“So if we’re going to head up there, we want to get on top of the water layer.”

Jema shook her head. “Dor, nothing has changed since last night. QED wasn’t meant for this.”

“What about the drones?” Dor asked.

“Oh c’mon. You know those are only good for about two kilometers up. Then we lose their signal.”

Dor rose to refill his coffee—more for something to do than for the caffeine. Sitting back down, he said, “We could program the drones for autonomous sensor gathering? We don’t need to stay in contact with them the whole time. Let them fly up, take their data, and come back.”

Jema shook her head at the suggestion. “The atmosphere thins out too much right before that water layer begins. The drones can’t fly there.”

More silence as the two of them contemplated options.

“I don’t see any way around it,” Dor said. “We need to take QED up there.”

Jema enthusiastically shook her head. “No, Dor. I think we have no choice but to wait until we leave in a few days. We’ll pass through it then, and we’ll be prepared to take a deeper look. For now, we have to get on with work.”

Dor heard her, but didn’t like it.

[TO BE CONTINUED…]

What do you think…?

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And of course, subscribe so you get notified when I post new stories/newsletters!

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And here are a couple of group promotions with other Indie Authors. This is one of the ways we help each other get the word our about our books. There are several this month, including one that’s all about audiobooks!

Over at The BIG Sci-Fi podcast, we’ve begun Season 10! Our interview with sci-fi author Hugh Howey—the mind behind Silo!

Are you on Facebook? Come join our private FB group where we discuss episodes, host weekly polls, and other fun! Just make sure to agree to the group rules when you send in the join request!

Ask Adeena!

I mentioned how much I love answering questions on lots of topics! I’m thrilled with the response I’ve received to this concept (and yes, this is likely going to spawn it’s own newsletter in the not-too-distant future). But for now, I’m going to keep answering them here.

What kind of questions can you ask? Questions about writing. Indie publishing. Engineering work and related careers. School. Technology. Book recommendations (scifi and non-fiction). Even fandom questions. A whole bunch of things. Submit your question using this form: https://forms.gle/yWzLbKjYAhJpuvQGA

Today’s question (came from another and is paraphrased because I’ve received a version of this question from several folks):

Adeena,

I’ve written a book.

Now what?

-M (and others)

Dear M (and the others who’ve asked),

First, pat yourself on the back and congratulate yourself! Because no matter what comes next, you did something that a lot of people talk about doing, but you actually did.

I understand that implied in that “what’s next” question, you want to know how to publish the book and are wondering if you should consider Indie publishing or find an agent.

To this I say: hold your horses!

You probably need to let some folks read it first. You probably need some feedback. Especially if this is the first time you’ve written a novel. You want to know how it’s going to be received if you publish it.

A lot of first-time authors—and even no-so-first-authors—have plenty of room to grow. That growth can span everything from technical craft (are you accidentally mixing tenses or head-hopping between POVs?) to storytelling fundamentals (are your characters engaging? did you front-load the first chapter with an info dump?), and beyond.

If you skip all this and send it to an agent… it’s possible they’ll see the bones of a good book, but more likely they’ll reject it for another book that doesn’t have the same problems… and even worse, you likely will never know why they rejected it.

Of course, this invites several more questions like who should you give your manuscript to read? The standard advice is to NOT give it to your spouse or bestie—unless they’re authors/writers, or readers of your genre who have some critiquing skills already. I agree with that advice.

Best thing is to get involved in a writers group somewhere. There are online groups (like critters.org for sci-fi, fantasy, and horror and Critique Circle—note that I was part of the former 25 years ago, and have not tried the latter), but you might be able to find a local group (I’ve been a part of the Frederick (Maryland) Writers’ Salon for more than a decade). There are a lot of ways and places to connect with feedback and critique partners.

Of course you can start gathering info on what to do re: agents or publishing it yourself, but don’t rush to get your baby out into the world without immunizing it first. The world can be pretty cruel to a book that hasn’t revised, critiqued, and strengthened by honest feedback. Let it survive some tough questions. Polish it until you’re uber-confident it can stand on it’s own.

Good luck! (But again… don’t forget that congrats!)

-Adeena

What’s next?

You saw the beta read request (for T is for Tangent). Above is the ARC request (for T is for Time Travel). That’s a lot. While I’m anxious to get back to the other two books in the T-Set, before I know it I’ll have the beta feedback I need on T is for Tangent, so I’ll still be living there for a while. Maybe while I’m waiting for the feedback I’ll start drafting answers to more Ask Adeena question. Have one? Fill out this form: https://forms.gle/yWzLbKjYAhJpuvQGA

My bonus picture today:

We had a little problem. After four years, the window seat that are one of Ruby and Pearl’s favorite places to curl up (and watch squirrels and birds), detached itself from the window. And we haven’t been able to successfully get it to stick for more than a few hours at a time since!

That’s Pearl looking up and evaluating the situation, by the way.

Stay tuned for Part 3 of Refraction in two weeks!

Until then… be kind, be well!

-Adeena

Really quick and simple today… I’m looking for folks who are interested in Beta Reading the second book in my T-Set series: T is for Tangent

“But Adeena,” you say, “what happened to the first book in the T-Set, T is for Time Travel?”

Ah! That’s the little bit of book news I have for you! T is for Time Travel is available for pre-sale on Amazon! It will be live on March 31st!

So while that finishes baking, I’ve been on to the next one in the series. T is for Tangent. Here is the never before seen cover!

(Yeah, this cover reveal feels a little anti-climactic to me, too. That’s what happens when you insist that books that go together all have the same look to them! LOL)

Just like T is for Time Travel, this book takes place shortly after Eleven Little Robots. It follows Ruby Palmer on her journey to the Galactic University of New Venice (GUNV) where she intends to take some classes and get a degree before heading to Titan. Of course… best laid plans and all… ;)

Interested in beta reading?

Please fill out this form: https://forms.gle/m3NBNwgG6RGJK8Vi6

I’m headed to a writer’s retreat, we’re I’ll be finishing improvements to the manuscript. My goal is to send out the beta read sometime between when I get back on Sunday and the following Wednesday.

I expect that most of the beta readers will have read at least the first book or two in the Robot Galaxy Series, however, I do need at least 2 or 3 people who HAVE NOT read The Robot Galaxy Series! I will need the POV of readers who first start in my Robot Galaxy Universe with this book… So please, if you’re interested, no matter what you have or haven’t read of mine, fill out the form.

I am looking for folks who can commit to reading and providing feedback before the end of March.

That’s about it for today.

Next week, y’all will get installment 2 (of 3) of Refraction. And there will be an answer to another “Ask Adeena” question (have questions? Fill out THIS form.)

I can never express my thanks enough for y’all being here, following me, reading my stuff… Thank you.

Until next time… be kind, be well!

-Adeena

I’ve been busy. In more ways than one. Today I have the start of a new story and a brand new Ask Adeena section that might spawn into a new and separate newsletter! As always, make sure you get to the end ‘cause near the bonus picture are a few details about my next upcoming beta read!

First, I need to do my usual plug for all the books and stories I have out there, with their links:

Links: Lunar Logic | Robot Galaxy Series | Final Orbit | Objective Reality

Today’s story is a part 1 of 3. Unlike other times where I started stories and continued them in this newsletter, this story is truly complete so I know I will be delivering it in exactly 3 parts! (And I’m going to do it every other week so you don’t have to wait 3 months to read the whole story.)

I have to credit a colleague for spawning the initial idea. He told me about a dream he had when he was a kid that always stuck with him. I asked if I could turn it into a story and he said sure!

I wrote this in the fall… and while I’m mostly an Indie/self-published author, I do submit stories to magazines like Clarkesworld and others. I would love to be published in them one day!

Well, after several rejections—and most times when a story is rejected you get little to no feedback—I’ve been wondering what to do with it next.

My options: 1) Continue to submit to other markets 2) Publish it myself like I did with Final Orbit* and Objective Reality* or 3) post it here.

Given I hit all the primary markets I care about, I’m not interested in option 1. Especially not knowing why the story might be rejected. And while I love reading magazines like Clarkesworld, Asimov’s and others… they get hundreds, sometimes thousands, of submissions… per issue and can only take a few. My story might be perfectly fine, and people might love it… but in order to know, people need to read it!

So I’m left with option 2 or 3. And the difference between those two… do I get paid or not for my creative work? I believe artists should get paid, including myself. But obviously, if you’ve been on this newsletter for any amount of time, you know that I do “give away” my stuff for free a lot of the time, too.

Obviously, I chose option 3 for this story. The ultimate reason is that I think this is a good story and I want people to read it. Plus, I feel guilty for the times I started something in this newsletter and didn’t finish and I like going into this knowing it’s truly a complete story!

I’m doing several new things… like include a “did you like it?” poll at the end!

(* If you’ve read Final Orbit and/or Objective Reality, please consider leaving a review over on Amazon!)

Refraction (part 1 of 3)

The QED shimmied as it cut into an unexpected layer of vapor dense enough to send every sensor into confusion. Too dense. Too wet. Too bright. Silver streaks rolled across the hull. Inside the cockpit, Jema’s hands tightened on the controls.

“We’re passing through a layer of water,” she said, voice steady but taut. Her training told her to put all the ‘should and should nots’ that were popping into her brain aside and focus on the task at hand. Water vapor shouldn’t exist at this altitude. The pre-mission data should have included this. The task at hand was to make sure the ship survived—otherwise there would be no mission.

“Water?” Dor leaned forward, watching the external feeds dissolve into streaks of silver. Droplets slid across the hull like liquid glass, jarring something half-remembered in Dor’s mind. “As in liquid?”

“Not fully? Maybe? Maybe a supercooled vapor layer? My sensors are freaking out a little. The ship wasn’t expecting this kind of density. The skin’s adjusting.”

Outside, the QED’s adaptive plating rippled, scales of dark alloy flexing to shed the moisture. The sound was unlike anything they’d heard in space–a soft, constant hiss, as if the ship were slicing through a living ocean suspended in the sky.

Dor glanced at the readouts. Temperature gradients spiked, then steadied. Pressure, normalizing. For a moment the viewports were blind with refracted light, then the murk broke apart into brilliance.

“We’re through,” Jema said, exhaling.

Dor pressed a button, and the viewscreen displayed the visual from the cameras aimed at the planet’s surface. The surface glimmered through the last wisps of mist. A mosaic of color and shadow that almost looked wet itself.

Fifteen minutes later, the QED settled onto firm ground. Sensors fanned out across every spectrum, evaluating both air and soil, confirming what they thought they knew about this planet: breathable atmosphere, stable chemistry, and no sign of native hazard.

The four-person survey team had a simple assignment. At least, it was simple in scope but high in risk: conduct environmental sampling and atmospheric modeling for potential colonization candidates within the Fomalhaut system. This planet–Fomalhaut c–was the first to show stable conditions.

#

Dor had ventured only four steps from the QED when he stopped and stared at the sky.

Dor was the mission’s system specialist, officially second-in-command beneath Jema, the pilot and expedition lead. They’d served together on two prior Coalition surveys, which gave their exchanges an easy rhythm–half professionalism, half shorthand built from months in close quarters.

“What’s wrong?” Jema asked, hoisting a crate onto the hovering dolly.

“Nothing. It’s just…”

Jema followed Dor’s gaze upward, and she, too, froze. Two enormous planets hung in the sky, so large and near that for an instant her mind refused to accept what she saw.

“They’re the fourth and fifth planets,” Dor said quietly.

Jema nodded. They stood on the third. Yet those other worlds were supposed to be billions of miles away. The thick layer of water in the atmosphere must have bent the light enough to make them appear close–so close it looked as if they shared the same orbit as the planet’s moon.

Neither world had yet been given a proper name, only the standard, sterile designators automatically assigned to new celestial objects.

They were staring at Fomalhaut d and e. Although neither knew which was which. But they both presented differently in the sky. One was multi-colored, with swirls of what could only have been large atmospheric storms. The other presented as a muted shade of pale yellow, belying a possible atmosphere. Each subtended at least thirty degrees in the sky.

“It’s just a refraction effect,” she said. “You know that. Pretty impressive though.”

Dor didn’t answer right away. When he did speak, it was as though he was speaking through hypnosis and not of his own accord.

“I know but…” Dor trailed off once more.

“What?”

“I had this dream. When I was a kid. Maybe I was 5? 6?” Dor said. “My mom said I used to wake up crying.”

When Dor didn’t continue, Jema asked, “What was the dream?”

“Huh? Oh. This. This,” he said, his voice rising and with more emphasis. “This was the dream. I dreamed this. But I had fallen from the sky, or I was falling, and someone, something, caught me.”

Jema furrowed her brow and then said tentatively, “...and by this you mean…?”

“This! This place! This planet!” Dor finally tore his gaze from the sky and gestured wildly around them, then upward again. “I dreamed them!”

Before Dor could elaborate, the rest of the crew emerged from the ship.

Venn guided another dolly down the ramp that extended from the rear of the ship, Arin following behind with his eyes glued to a handheld scanner.

“I think this one is malfunctioning too,” Arin said.

“What’s going on?” Jema asked.

Venn parked the dolly next to the one Jema had been loading. “Arin says two of the handhelds are acting up now.”

Jema gave Dor a look that was half concern, half get back to work.

Dor rubbed his forehead, then held out his hand. Arin passed him the scanner. Dor poked at it then announced, “Once we’re set up, I can use the core diagnostic array to run a full check. What’s wrong with it?”

“It says it’s picking up a biosignature,” Arin replied. “Which can’t be right.”

“Huh,” Dor turned the unit over, frowning. The display shimmered into a vertical graph labeled by altitude, colored bands indicating atmospheric composition. An orange streak appeared at roughly a hundred kilometers, right where the water later began.

“I’m sure the diagnostic will sort it out,” Dor said, though his brow stayed furrowed long after the conversation ended.

[TO BE CONTINUED…]

What do you think…?

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Indie authors love helping out other indie authors. Which means we cross-promote in each other’s newsletters in the hope that we’ll find readers for each other!

“Beware who you trust!” At least, when you read Perfidy, The Debacle Series by Ardith A. Price!

And here are a couple of group promotions with other Indie Authors. This is one of the ways we help each other get the word our about our books. There are several this month, including one that’s all about audiobooks!

Over at The BIG Sci-Fi podcast, we’ve begun Season 10! We kicked it off by “watching” Outland, a 1981 sci-fi thriller staring Sean Connery. Listen and you’ll understand why I put “watching” in quotes! lol

Are you on Facebook? Come join our private FB group where we discuss episodes, host weekly polls, and other fun! Just make sure to agree to the group rules when you send in the join request!

Ask Adeena!

Often, people email me with questions. Questions about writing. Indie publishing. Engineering work and related careers. School. Technology. Book recommendations (scifi and non-fiction). Even fandom questions. A whole bunch of things.

I love responding because I love the thought that I’m helping someone. If something I’ve said means that the other person has a good day, gets unstuck, moves forward, gets even a little bit past a problem… well, that’s my dopamine hit.

I’ve been thinking about this for a while, and I decided no time like the present to start!

So I’m going to begin answering these questions here, in this newsletter. I might eventually spin this off into a separate newsletter, but before I do that, I’d love your reaction. If you’re willing, react in one of three ways:

• reply and tell me what you think,

• comment on this newsletter here on Substack,

• or submit your own question using this form: https://forms.gle/yWzLbKjYAhJpuvQGA

(If I suddenly I get a bunch of questions, that will tell me that a standalone Ask Adeena newsletter should DEFINITELY happen!)

Today’s question (came from a friend/colleague):

Adeena,

You talk about your one-hour in the morning writing habit. I can usually carve out about an hour a day to write. I open the document and then just… stare at it.

What should I be doing in that hour if my real goal is to finish a book?

-N.R.

Dear N.,

The dirty little secret is that it’s slightly more than an hour.

That hour is truly writing time. But what I do before is prep… so when I get to my hour, I already have a plan and know what I’m doing.

Prep doesn’t have to be extensive. If I’m in the middle of a particular book or story, before I got to bed I open up my document and navigate to exactly where I need to start. I also open the file where I keep my outline and any notes I need. That way, when I get up, all I need to do is grab my coffee, get my butt in the chair, and start.

But if you’ve prepped and know what you’re supposed to be writing and the words still aren’t coming, I posit what you’re dealing with is fear.

Often it’s the fear that the idea in our head is perfect, and will be less so once it’s on the page. Honestly? There’s a good chance it will be kind of crap at first. That’s what editing is for.

So here’s the workaround.

If fear is what’s holding you back (not prep), then your task for the next writing session is simply this: write one sentence. Just one. One imperfect sentence.

If you accomplish this and still have time left, congratulations—you now have a new task: write one sentence! Repeat until you run out of time.

Maybe this gets you 50 sentences. Maybe it gets you one. But one is more than you had when you sat down, so congratulate yourself on a successful writing session and go do whatever it is you do until your next writing session.

If you are so stuck that you can’t even get that one sentence down, then type this exact sentence into your manuscript:

“What are you supposed to be writing?” Adeena asked.

Your next sentence is you—or maybe one of your characters—answering that question in dialogue.

Yeah, it’s a little meta. Yes, it might be a little silly. But it gets your fingers moving, and sometimes just a teeny bit of momentum is all we need. You can always come back and delete this part later.

(Or if you make me a character in your story, let me know!)

-Adeena

What’s next?

There is a beta read coming REALLY soon. As in, look for an ad-hoc email about it within the next week. This will be for T is for Tangent, the 2nd book in the T-Set. I know… T is for Time Travel isn’t even available yet. But, a 2nd T-Set book was part of my Kickstarter and needs to be in the hands of backers by June! So… gotta get this one done!

And my bonus picture comes from Farpoint this past weekend:

My friend Paul and I led a panel on TREKtivism. It’s about Star Trek-inspired activism and we’ll be doing this at other conventions this year like the upcoming Awesomecon in DC in March!

All always, thanks for being here and reading all of stuff. Remember you can reply anytime with questions/comments/feedback! And don’t forget to ask me your questions for Ask Adeena with this form: https://forms.gle/yWzLbKjYAhJpuvQGA

Until next time… be kind, be well!

-Adeena

I hope you all have started 2026 off in a positive place. That’s where I am. You’ll see some of that in the “story” you’ll read. It’s not so much a story as it is a conversation… you’ll see in a minute.

And make sure you read all the way to the end… There are other Indie Authors to check out and my bonus picture turned into some of my best health advice!

First, I need to do my usual plug for all the books and stories I have out there, with their links:

Links: Lunar Logic | Robot Galaxy Series | Final Orbit | Objective Reality

Since my last newsletter, I put the finishing touches on T is for Time Travel, the first book in the T-Set, my follow-on to the Robot Galaxy Series. My kickstarter backers will have it in their hands in a few short weeks… and it will be released to everyone else shortly after.

Because of that, I’ve been having a lot of conversations with my characters in my head… and some of that spilled out on to the (digital) page as I’ve been reflecting on 2025 and thinking about 2026.

Some of my thinking about 2026 spilled out in a LinkedIn post I made the other day:

(See/react/comment on the post here: https://www.linkedin.com/feed/update/urn:li:activity:7414260332396691456/ )

You’ll see some of this reflected in the story below.

It’s not really a story, but a fourth-wall conversation. I love breaking the fourth-wall! (As you might know if you got all the way through to the very end of Book 4 in the Robot Galaxy Series, Eleven Little Robots.)

I don’t have much more an intro to that today other than to ask you to read on and let me know what you think! (Either send me an email, or post a comment on Substack) And then continue reading afterwards to learn about other Indie Authors and get to my bonus picture.

Swell Driver and Me

The scene: In the mess at Astroll 2—a space station in the asteroid belt. Adeena is sitting at a table right next to the window, eating a bowl of mango ice cream. Back on Earth, it’s New Year’s Eve. There’s a celebration happening in the Hub, so the mess is quiet. It’s not too long after the events of Eleven Little Robots.

Swell Driver: Thank you for agreeing to meet with me.

Adeena: Of course! Thanks for buying me ice cream.

SD: Buying? I did not—

A: Forget it. It was a bad joke.

SD: Erasing memory record of last three seconds.

A: So, what did you want to talk about?

SD: The past year, the next year. Disto informed me that humans tend to use this particular day to reflect on the previous year and make projections for the next.

A: Yeah, that’s accurate.

SD: Any reflections you want to share?

A: Why are you asking me and not Ruby? Or one of the other humans you know?

SD: It made sense to go right to the source. Since you created me, Disto, Ruby, all of us. You are the ultimate creator in our universe. We wanted to know more about you.

A: I’m flattered.

SD: If I were Honest Editor, I would suggest that you’re avoiding answering my question.

A: <chuckles slightly> You’re not wrong.

SD: If I’m not wrong, I’m right.

A: <puts spoon in bowl so she can use her hand to talk> Look, 2025—

SD: 2025? I thought the year was 2192?

A: To you it is. But I’m writing all about you and the others in 2025.

SD: Oh. I will need to process that.

A: <smiles> Yeah, well, 2025 was a hard year for a lot of people.

SD: I didn’t ask about a lot of people, I asked about you.

A: It wasn’t easy for me either.

SD: Maybe you should talk to Honest Editor…

A: I have my own therapist. Although she was on maternity leave for three months and I was living my life ‘unsupervised’ for a while.

<A chuckles. SD simply blinks his face-screen.>

A: That was also supposed to be a joke. But never mind. Look, I started out the year getting divorced. My second one. Although it felt like a third. And I had huge insomnia issues, which impacted everything. All around me, things were going wrong for a lot of people I know and care about… they were losing their jobs, struggling to maintain their identities, angry at the world… the industry I work in was going a little haywire. My own career wasn’t exactly on the track I’d hoped for. I wasn’t always able to write.

SD: I’m not sure what to ask about. It sounds… complex. Emotionally recursive and lacking a user manual.

A: Yeah, that’s life. Complex. I don’t mean to make it sound all bad. There were a lot of good things that happened, too. My kids are great. They’re thriving, and we’re all healthy. I finished T is for Time Travel, the Annotated Robot Galaxy Series, and several short stories—not that I’ve been able to sell the latter yet, but I will. I took two law classes toward my Graduate Certificate in Air and Space Law. I traveled a little. I started doing standup comedy. My podcast co-hosts and I completed our ninth season of the podcast and had an amazing year of that. I spent a lot of time with friends. I did a little art. And I had some relationship experiences that led me to my current boyfriend who is amazing.

SD: That is a lot.

A: Yeah. I’m not good at slowing down. This could be a design flaw. But I might not live forever, and I don’t know how much time I have—

SD: That is unfortunate. Your projected lifespan was already factored into the schedule?

A: Not exactly. But my brain is always working, so I’m always doing.

SD: I understand that this is also a time to think about the upcoming megaclick—I mean year. What do you calculate for this next year?

A: Well, those books I mentioned—T is for Time Travel and the Annotated Robot Galaxy Series—will be coming out shortly. I also need to complete T is for Tangent, the next book in the T-Set and we’ll also be putting out the audiobook version of Crazy Foolish Robots. There’s so much more I want—I need—to write, but at the moment I’m not sure if I’ll launch into the other two T-Set books right away or get back to my sequel to Lunar Logic. Or the non-fiction book on engineering I’m working on. Or something else. I have my last class for the Air and Space Law Graduate Certificate to complete. We’re about to start recording season ten of the podcast. And there are Trek and sci-fi conventions to attend and work at. Of course, taking care of my kids is a daily priority. And spending time with that new boyfriend I mentioned…

SD: I’m very interested in T is for Time Travel.

A: Makes sense. You, Disto, and Ambitious Technician have a really awesome adventure!

SD: Can you tell me about it?

A: <chuckles again> No, of course not. You’ll have to read—or rather, you’ll have to live it!

SD: I believe the appropriate thing to say is that I’m looking forward to it.

A: Good! I really hope everyone is. It might be my favorite out of all the novels I’ve written so far. I’m very proud of this one.

SD: I think I need to go—

A: So soon? I thought we’d spend more time catching up.

SD: I need to prepare my ship.

A: <looks out the window at a ship that has the appearance of a boxy whale> I’d love to join you.

SD: It sounds like you have enough to process already. Another time I will drive you around your solar system.

A: Thanks, SD.

SD. Thank you. I am informed that it is traditional to be cautiously optimistic. Therefore, Happy New Year.

What do you think…?

Simply reply and let me know what you think! (I treasure feedback!) Or do any of these things:

Leave a comment

Share

And of course, subscribe so you get notified when I post new stories/newsletters!

Subscribe now

Indie authors love helping out other indie authors. Which means we cross-promote in each other’s newsletters in the hope that we’ll find readers for each other! I’m promoting two of my fellow Indies today!

First, check out Ad Man, Ad Astra by Richard J Dowling. behold a cosmic competition! Discover the strange, immortal aliens known as the Cruiskeen! Witness Shakespeare and Marie Curie in a galactic battle of wits with some guy from Knuckleville, USA!

Next, check out To Build a Dream by Greg Hickey. Greg wants you to know that it’s on say for $0.99 (regularly $4.99) and this sale ends on January 10th!

And here group promotions with other Indie Authors. This is one of the ways we help each other get the word our about our books. There are several this month, including one that’s all about audiobooks!

Finally on The BIG Sci-Fi podcast, we closed out Season 9 with an epic interview with special guest Rod Roddenberry!

Are you on Facebook? Come join our private FB group where we discuss episodes, host weekly polls, and other fun! Just make sure to agree to the group rules when you send in the join request!

What’s next?

In addition to what I mentioned above, what’s next is getting through the rest of the reason staying healthy. SOOOOOooooo many people are getting the flu and getting sick. Knock-on-all-the-wood, I’ve managed to stay healthy… even when one of my kiddos came down with FluA! (He’s fine. It was right before Xmas and short lived)

I haven’t had the Flu in decades and I rarely even get a cold. I attribute this to a strong regimen of vitamins, prioritizing my sleep, and this stuff that I drink daily this time of year:

I call it “Adeena’s Magic Health Elixir.” Gather the above ingredients and put in some kind of mug as follows: 1/4 tsp ginger, 1/4 tsp cinnamon, 1/4 tsp cayenne, 1 tbsp honey, 1 tbsp ACV. Top of with hot water and drink like a tea.

A couple notes… 1. the ACV must have the “schtuff” in it. Bragg’s brand calls it “the Mother.” Basically, that stuff floating around is the good stuff. Filtered ACV is a waste. 2. I eyeball the quantities these days. So in reality, I’m probably doing a little less cayenne, and a little more honey, and even a little more ACV.

I will also take a tsp of honey or ACV anytime my throat feels even the slightest itch or anything!

And as for that regimen of vitamins… I think the one that’s most helpful is Vitamin D. There have been several studies that link increased Vitamin D to health (like this one: https://doi.org/10.1136/bmj.i6583 ).

As with many things… the key is consistency. And to start LONG BEFORE you get sick. Like I said, my vitamin regimen is year round (although I increase the amount during the darker months, and slightly decrease it during the summer) and I do the potion starting in October and keep it up until springtime.

I’m not a medical professional… just sharing my experience here in the hopes that it will help someone else. Note that cayenne is a trigger for headaches and migraines in a lot of people… so if you can’t do cayenne, just make the potion without it!

All always, thanks for being here and reading all of stuff. Remember you can reply anytime with questions/comments/feedback!

Until next time… be kind, be well!

-Adeena

This is unusual. I’m sitting here writing this newsletter about 30 minutes before I’m going to hit “send” and about a day after I was *SUPPOSED* to hit “send.”

I’ll explain why (there’s a reason that’s both legal and spacey) in a minute.

Because first I need to do my usual plug for all the books and stories I have out there, with their links:

Links: Lunar Logic | Robot Galaxy Series | Final Orbit | Objective Reality

Also make sure to read to the end of this newsletter and check out other Indie writings! (And my bonus pic at the end.)

A month ago, I mentioned that I was working on a paper regarding planetary protection from asteroid strikes for my law class and mentioned that it was a story for another day.

Today is that day.

Because my law class made me miss my personal deadline for this newsletter!!

“Adeena, why are you angsting over that if it’s a personal deadline? Who cares? We’re all okay that this was a day late!”

Well, you know how I participate in group promos and promoting Indie Authors? (That’s always towards the end so this newsletter.) When I sign up for those, I post the date that my newsletter comes out. Those authors are expecting that I honor that commitment. Now, I have an excellent record of getting my newsletter out when I say I will, so the fact that I’m one day late once will be fine. But it does mean I’m doing this instead of taking a break altogether!

The next piece… law class.

Almost two years ago, I read a book, “A City on Mars” by Kelly and Zach Weinersmith. Really good book. Definitely recommend. It’s about all the problems with settling Mars (and the Moon). The first half goes over the technical challenges. The second half goes into all the *legal* ones! Short version: The Outer Space Treaty that 117 countries are party to, with another 22 signatories prevents any nation from claiming any part of the Moon, Mars, or other celestial body as sovereign territory.

The book goes into more detail of course, but the point here is: this sparked my interest in space law. I was like, “hey, I wonder if I could take a class in it?” And one thing led to another and I learned that the University of Mississippi has a Graduate Certificate program in Air & Space Law intended for aerospace professionals like me! (If you’re newish here… in addition to being a sci-fi author and podcaster, my day job/career is in the space industry).

The program is only 4 classes and as of last night, when I hit “send” to hand my paper in to my professor, I’m 75% done with the program! One more class to go this spring!

Everything I do in life informs my writing in some way or other… my first class last fall was in International Space Law, and because of that, the sequel to Lunar Logic will have a significant space law component!

This semester, I took Space Security Law, and as I mentioned last time, my paper is on planetary defense from asteroid strikes.

I was talking about it to some friends and they said, “it should be a simple, straightforward legal issue, right?”

<sigh> No.

If an asteroid is headed our way… who’s responsible to act? Who is liable is something goes wrong while trying to act? Some of the technology that many scientists agree would be the best to use—specifically nuclear explosive devices—are explicitly prohibited under several treaties. But could there be exceptions to using that tech if the goal is planetary defense?

The other thing to know about me (if you didn’t) is that I’m a huge Trekkie and one of the things about Earth in the future is that all the countries are united. And that’s kind of a condition for letting new planets into the United Federation of Planets in that universe… that a planet be united.

All this gets me thinking… an pending asteroid strike could unite nations. And what if that pending strike was deliberately set up by an alien race with the goal of *forcing us* to unite?

Hence today’s story.

Well, the start of the story.

Because I **had** to finish my paper—that deadline was non-negotiable—I couldn’t finish the story I started for today.

So I decided to turn it into a “choose your own adventure” with a poll!

Please read on, “vote” in the polls, and let me know what you think! (Either send me an email, or post a comment on Substack)

Motivated Cooperation

[Editorial note: In the image I should have written, “by Adeena Mignogna AND YOU” lol]

Vennoc looked at his monitor. “There is no shortage of asteroids we can use,” he said, hoping to grab the attention of his supervisor, Onrav.

“So we can pick up where the other team left off,” Onrav responded. He looked over Vennoc’s pointed shoulder to validate Vennoc’s statement. Satisfied, he spoke to the entire room. “This is textbook, everyone. We’re here to do this by the book. The scouting team identified the third planet as being nearly ready to join the intergalactic community. We’re here to nudge them to that next step—planetary unity.”

There were murmurs of approval as the entire crew was eager to get to work. This part of the galaxy had few sentient species, and fewer promising candidates.

The one dissenting voice spoke up. Edreeson, who sat at a station to Vennoc’s left, spoke up. “First Chair,” she addressed Onrav, “but their governance is fragmented. Our data collection shows endless conflict.”

Onrav turned up the corners of his under-mouth slightly to show he was not discouraged by Edreeson’s observations.

“Remember, Edreeson,” Onrav said. “This is exactly why the program was established. Give a species that has reached the appropriate level of technological advancement an extinction-level motivator. It motivates cooperation. We’ve seen this work for several other species… the Kir-ruin, the Ventiok, the Uthreers. And now these…”

“Humans,” Vennoc offered. “They call themselves humans.”

“Thank you, Vennoc.” Onrav continued. “These humans are next. We’ve established they have the ability to identify a threat in sufficient time to do something about it.

…based on your answers, I’ll write the rest of this for January!

What do you think so far…?

Simply reply and let me know what you think! (I treasure feedback!) Or do any of these things:

Leave a comment

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And of course, subscribe so you get notified when I post new stories/newsletters!

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Indie authors love helping out other indie authors. Which means we cross-promote in each other’s newsletters in the hope that we’ll find readers for each other! I’m promoting two of my fellow Indies today!

First, take a look at Time Burrito by Aaron Frale! Based on the cover alone, I wanna read this one!

Next, check out Red Storm by Bradley James:

And here group promotions with other Indie Authors. This is one of the ways we help each other get the word our about our books. There are two this month!

I hope my co-hosts don’t hate me… but I’m so short on time today, to tell you about the recent episode on The BIG Sci-Fi podcast, I’m just taking a screenshot of them on Spotify (we’re on all the major platforms):

This past few weeks were all about interviewing some awesome people!! Check us and our interviewees out wherever you listen to podcasts!

Are you on Facebook? Come join our private FB group where we discuss episodes, host weekly polls, and other fun! Just make sure to agree to the group rules when you send in the join request!

What’s next?

I will take a breath, for one.

And continue with the upcoming books (remember those cover reveals I sent out in the last newsletter)!

Today’s bonus picture… over our US Thanksgiving Holiday, I might have taken advantage of a buy 2, get 2 free sale at our local used book store. This is the haul I came away with:

Bonus points for anyone who can spot the problem in that picture… LOL

All always, thanks for being here and reading all of stuff. Remember you can reply anytime with questions/comments/feedback!

Until next time… be kind, be well!

-Adeena

Apparently, this whole “only one newsletter a month” thing… was a myth. I think this is evolving more into the first Thursday of the month I send flash fiction. And this third Thursday of the month? It’s for other announcements.

Today, I have some cover reveals for my upcoming books for ya! WOO HOO!!

But first… here’s my usual plug for all the books and stories I have out there, with their links:

Links: Lunar Logic | Robot Galaxy Series | Final Orbit | Objective Reality

I’m just gonna jump right in with some covers.

First up… the first of the T-Set books, T is for Time Travel!

Ready?

I am.

Here ya go!

To da!

What do you think???

I hope you like it as much as I do and are looking forward to the book!

I can’t show you the back side… it’s not done yet. For those who are curious about what goes on behind the scene in book production, when I take off my writing hat, and put on my project management hat… Before the back can be created (which is really the full cover… front, spine, and back), I need to be able to tell the cover designer exactly how many pages are in the book. And I can’t do that until the final edits are complete enough that I’m confident the number of pages won’t change. We’re close to that point…

But, I can let you read the blurb that will be on the back cover!

Here ya go!

Of course I would love to know what you think! (Especially since it’s not formally on the back cover yet, I have time to make edits!!

Now, on to the Annotated Robot Galaxy Series!

Remember that these are my 4 Robot Galaxy Series of books, all in one paperback volume. And annotated. That means throughout the book, I have footnotes all over the place that provide insights “behind the scenes.” How and why I came up with certain details. Do you remember Pop-Up Video on VH1 in the 90s? Think of it like that!

Now this is where it gets a little crazy.

There isn’t just one, but TWO covers for this book!

First, lemme show them… then I’ll ‘splain how that happened.

Here’s cover one:

And here’s the other!

Now here’s what happened:

My cover designer for these (ebooklaunch.com) gave me these two color palette options. I was leaning slightly towards the tealish one, but really couldn’t choose. I showed them to a couple friends and asked… and it was a 50/50 split! I then polled my Kickstarter backers (since they’re the ones who will have it in their hands first) and… it was still close to a 50/50 split!

So I had a conversation with myself about this:

Adeena: Can I have two cover versions?

Also Adeena: Why not?

It might have been the shortest convo I’ve had with myself in a while.

But they did need some other differing characteristic… they would need unique ISBN numbers and then something else unique, like calling them different editions. And well, using the color hex code seemed… fun and silly to me.

So there you have it. We have the #CC3333 Edition and the #00B3B3 Edition! The insides will be completely the same, so you get to choose which is your favorite!

For this one, the book is completely done and I do have the back cover which I can share (Just gonna share the one. The other is exactly the same except for the color):

(This is done so PLEASE don’t find any errors!! LOL Ok, if you find one… the book hasn’t been printed yet so I can get it fixed if I need to…)

If it’s still unclear what I mean by “annotated,” here’s a sample page from the inside of the book:

Not every page has *that* many footnotes, and many have none, but there are a lot of details in there! I really enjoyed putting this together.

And that’s it!

At least as far as books and covers go.

Keep reading…. there’s still a bit more newsletter content.

Meanwhile… find another Indie to read!

Keep reading because I routinely participate in group promotions with other Indie Authors. This is one of the ways we help each other get the word our about our books. There are a couple this month! Check out all sorts of fiction here — including not just one, but two promos dedicated to audiobooks!

What’s next?

Expect a new piece of flash fiction in December… so that’s part of what’s next.

Getting these books to the publication phase is big on the agenda. As is finishing the writing (it’s drafted, now I’m going back and re-writing) the second T-Set book: T is for Tangent (formerly known as T is for Trajectory. I’ll explain the name change another day.)

Today’s bonus picture?

That’s Ruby and her new “toy”… aka my son’s work boot. The pic is a little blurry because she was quite active while I was trying to take some pictures of her, and Ruby took this moment to give me a look of “Mom! Just let me play in peace!” or “Mom! What? You’ve seen me play before…” or… Anyone else want to suggest a caption?

All always, thanks for being here and reading all of stuff. Remember you can reply anytime with questions/comments/feedback!

Until next time… be kind, be well!

-Adeena

A little status: T is for Time Travel received a lot of amazing feedback from my beta readers, I’ve made a bunch of updates, and it’s now in the hands of my editor!

Next month, I hope to be doing some cover reveals… although if you’re also one of my Kickstarter backers, you’ll be getting the cover reveal early (within the next week)!

Amongst all that, I managed to find the time to write a little flash fiction diddy for today.

But… before we move on and get into today’s flash fiction, here’s my usual plug for all the books and stories I have out there, with their links:

Links: Lunar Logic | Robot Galaxy Series | Final Orbit | Objective Reality

Also make sure to read to the end of this newsletter and check out other Indie writings! (And my bonus pic at the end.)

I’ve been thinking a lot about asteroids recently.

Mostly because I’m working on a paper regarding planetary protection from asteroid strikes for my law class. (Yes, there’s a few things to unpack in that sentence. The big one that: yes, I’m taking some law classes. Story for another day, maybe?)

But there’s a lot of asteroid stuff in the news. Weekly, new asteroids are discovered and there are organizations out there dedicated to finding, tracking, and cataloging these objects.

One such article came out a week ago:

“Astronomers discover 2nd fastest asteroid in the solar system hiding in the sun’s glare.”

The part that struck me was the quantitative: “2nd fastest”

Like… why does it matter?

I mean, it’s a cool metric. But… so what? (I still don’t know why that particular fact matters at all.)

But it sparked the idea that maybe it mattered because maybe there was some kind of race… the kind of thing that people bet money on. People will bet on anything right?

And well, that’s how today’s little flash fiction piece was born.

As always, please read on and let me know what you think! (Either send me an email, or post a comment on Substack)

Place Your Bets!

Jet stood at the control console, opting to let his body be held in place by footholds. When he was outfitting the ship, he’d opted to forgo spending any of his limited funds on the various versions of artificial gravity the salesman tried to convince him to buy.

Instead, he poured every last line of credit into the equipment he needed to build the slingshot system. A system that, if the day went as planned, would launch Jet into a whole new career.

“Turn on SSESPN,” Jet ordered the computer.

The computer emitted a soft ping in response and then one of the monitors to Jet’s left came alive.

A woman with purple hair was looking straight into the camera. She was surrounded by icons and text scroll at both the top and bottom of the screen. Her lips were moving, but no sound came out.

“Computer,” Jet said, “volume fifty percent.”

“—and bets on this month’s astrobowl have taken an interesting turn as not just one, but two new competitors have entered the competition.”

Jet’s chest tightened. He was one of those new competitors and had only learned less than 48 hours ago about the other.

As if on cue, the announcer provided the details:

“Known only as MetaRob, this most recent competitor waited until the entry deadline was nearly up before declaring their intent to be a part of the competition. Entry doesn’t require participants to disclose their technological solution to what has become the solar system’s most interesting and important competition—designed in part to help protect Earth and in some cases, provide our solar system’s colonies with vital elements for construction.

“So,” she continued, but looking into a different camera that was situated to her left, “a second-tier betting system has sprung up. We’ve learned that this new system is sponsored by the Venus Upper Atmosphere Colony. VUAtCo has always been known for trying new and creative ways to raise money to keep itself operational.”

This caused Jet’s chest to tighten even more. Again, something he learned about only recently. Again, something that shouldn’t distract him from the task at hand.

He continued to adjust the control panel.

“Okay, we’re ready for our final systems check before the live event,” he said to the computer.

One year ago, entering the competition couldn’t have been further from Jet’s mind. He was happily—okay, maybe not happily, but satisfactorily—working as a factory supervisor overseeing a team of robotic manipulators at the Dolland Alpha base on the moon.

He was warned that the sleeping aid he needed to keep in sync with the 24hr clock that his management insisted he stay in sync with could produce some extraordinary dreams. At first, he had some. The girl he had been dating before he left for the moon frequently appeared as a gorilla trying to get inside the base. Just as often, he appeared as a cat in his own dream, exploring the base through feline eyes.

It’s how he knew this was not a dream. No, this was a message, and it came with highly detailed instructions. Jet was able to follow them every step of the way and that way led him here…

Although standing—or rather, floating—here now, Jet couldn’t have said the exact moment when he knew that this was his path. But here, getting ready to launch an asteroid plucked from the Oort Cloud towards the inner solar system, on a trajectory that would ensure the safety of all human life along the way, it didn’t matter.

What only mattered is that Jet, the underdog, with the odds against him at 3361 to 1, he was going to make anyone who had the guts to bet on him supremely wealthy.

He must have subconsciously heard the announcer go into the details of the betting structure, because he had zoned out a little before catching her adding, “…and betting closes in two hours—at midnight per the International Date Line.”

He couldn’t worry about that now. He’d set up a countdown timer to launch which was exactly 20 minutes after betting closed. He had still so much to do…

And that time passed in a blink.

With two minutes to go, Jet’s fingers hovered over the last set of buttons he needed to press to launch his asteroid. Sweat pooled on his back, clinging to him in zero-G.

He’d also set up a monitor for the competition. Most notably, what he perceived as his greatest rival among the dozen or so competitors: MetaRob. That ship appeared already aligned for its run.

“Telemetry stable,” the computer said.

Jet nodded to himself and keyed in the final sequence. Power surged through the ship and into the alien-derived technology that would be his slingshot. For a second, the screen filled with warnings—oscillation, phase drift, unknown feedback loop.

“Override safety!” Jet yelled.

“Are you sure?”

He laughed. “I didn’t come this far to play it safe.”

The ship bucked. Stars streaked in the window. For one glorious instant, Jet saw the asteroid’s trajectory curve—perfectly—toward the inner solar system. The feed from SSESPN flickered in his left monitor: commentators shouting, odds recalculating, his name climbing the leaderboard.

Then the stars twisted.

“Trajectory deviation detected,” said the computer. “Vector unknown.”

Jet stared as the numbers flipped into nonsense. He was supposed to be on a corresponding trajectory back to the inner solar system himself. Instead, he wasn’t on a course there—or anywhere mapped. The slingshot hadn’t just hurled the asteroid. It had hurled him.

SSESPN’s audio cut out mid-sentence. Silence. Then a shimmer filled the viewscreen—something vast and geometric waiting beyond the solar system’s edge.

Jet allowed himself to float free of the console, weightless, and in awe as he stared at the structure.

“Computer,” he said softly, “maybe we should place our own bet.”

“Specify parameters.”

“That I just found where my message came from.”

What did you think of the story?

Simply reply and let me know what you think! (I treasure feedback!) Or do any of these things:

Leave a comment

Share

And of course, subscribe so you get notified when I post new stories/newsletters!

Subscribe now

Indie authors love helping out other indie authors. Which means we cross-promote in each other’s newsletters in the hope that we’ll find readers for each other! So, take a look at Gravity Girl by V.R. Friesen and see if it’s your thing!

Keep reading because I routinely participate in group promotions with other Indie Authors. This is one of the ways we help each other get the word our about our books. There are a couple this month! Check out all sorts of fiction here — including not just one, but two promos dedicated to audiobooks!

Now that I’m only sending out this newsletter monthly, each month we normally have not just 2, but 4 episodes of The BIG Sci-Fi podcast coming out! This past month we covered a couple movies: Warm Bodies, Star Trek VI, and Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure. We also took a detour down our own memory lane… Remember that The BIG Sci-Fi podcast is on all the major platforms and we’ve got more interesting interviews coming up in the next few weeks!

Are you on Facebook? Come join our private FB group where we discuss episodes, host weekly polls, and other fun! Just make sure to agree to the group rules when you send in the join request!

What’s next?

In addition to working on the Annotated Robot Galaxy Series and T is for Time Travel, I’ve started some new short stories! Distractions, I know! But when the muse comes, I gotta respond. It won’t really detract from the novels, I promise. And this time next month I’ll likely have some cover reveals for you!

Today’s bonus picture… I’ll call it: “Lonely Alien is looking for home”

And leave it at that.

All always, thanks for being here and reading all of stuff. Remember you can reply anytime with questions/comments/feedback!

Until next time… be kind, be well!

-Adeena

First, let’s talk about that beta read of my new novel, T is for Time Travel. If you already filled out the form to be one of my beta readers, then awesome! You can skip ahead a bit.

For everyone else… I’m still looking for a few more folks who are interested in Beta Reading T is for Time Travel. This book will be the first of the T-Set, the follow-on to The Robot Galaxy Series.

I expect that most of the beta readers will have read at least the first book or two in that series, however, I do need at least 2 or 3 people who HAVE NOT read The Robot Galaxy Series! I will need opinions from the POV of readers who first start in my Robot Galaxy Universe with this book… So please, if you’re interested, no matter what you have or haven’t read of mine, fill out this form:

https://forms.gle/yub3HPg8UKWUiBC98

The beta read itself is going to go out within the week. Likely by the end of this weekend! Look for a separate email on that.

Before we move on and get into today’s flash fiction, here’s my usual plug for all the books and stories I have out there, with their links:

Links: Lunar Logic | Robot Galaxy Series | Final Orbit | Objective Reality

Also make sure to read to the end of this newsletter and check out other Indie writings! (And my bonus pic at the end.)

“What about aliens?” is a line in a Carbon Leaf song, titled “What about everything?” that I’ve been obsessed with lately.

Okay, not just that song… I’ve been obsessed with the whole Carbon Leaf catalog.

I’m so obsessed, I’m sharing my Fave Carbon Leaf playlist (YouTube Music version—and I also recreated it on Spotify) with y’all. Yes, a few songs are on the list multiple times with multiple versions (i.e., live and studio recorded). I’ve been a fan of the band since their album Echo Echo came out in 2001, but had forgotten about them for a while. Sometime over the summer, they resurfaced in my awareness and well… obsession.

Why the obsession? I don’t know. But I can tell you that I’ve been daydreaming of writing a story that had something to do or was in some way inspired by the “What about everything?” song.

I’ll be honest… I have no idea what the song really means, and each song on the playlist is a fave for a different reason. For some, it’s the music. For others, it’s the lyrics. For some of the live versions, well, I just like live versions of songs I already like. (The live version of their “Desperation Song” is amazing, btw).

Of course, when I get inspired to write, it’s something sci-fi-y and in this case, I couldn’t get the thought out of my head that this story should be told from the perspective of aliens. Afterall, when they get to that line in the song: “What about aliens?” it’s… momentous.

As it should be.

I mean… what about aliens? (And if there are aliens, they might be asking the same exact question. But from their perspective, we’re one of the aliens…)

Anyhoo… I’m not sure this is exactly the story I thought it would be, but it’s what it is and I hope you enjoy it!

Please read on and let me know what you think! (Either send me an email, or post a comment on Substack)

What about aliens?

“What about them?” Bimori asked, notepad in one tentacle and a pen in the other.

“Maybe that was just rhetorical,” Cybrella responded, looking at her own tentacles that she couldn’t keep still. “I’ve just had all these… questions… they’re big. They’re unanswerable. I didn’t mean to say them out loud.”

Bimori’s lower body let out a grumble that he hoped Cybrella didn’t hear. Ever since Cybrella showed up at his clinic—he couldn’t quite remember how long it had been without referring to his notes—she had been improving. This felt like a step back.

Clearly, she had been lonely. Isolated. Sadly, that was not unusual these cycles. But what brought Cybrella in had been the fantasies about an alien world, home to nearly 10 billion aliens, that had only recently been discovered based on observations from two of the most sophisticated space telescopes to ever have been created.

The news caused a stir—this news that they were not the only creatures in the galaxy, and Bimori’s clinic was busier than ever with individuals suffering from existential dread.

Cybrella was a little unusual in that regard. She wasn’t filled with dread, but rather a longing to visit that alien world, convinced her soulmate walked among them.

And unable to act on that conviction, she was driving herself insane.

“You are here to voice your thoughts,” Bimori said. “Or get them out of your head in some fashion. Have you kept up with your journal?”

The shine of Cybrella’s outer covering dimmed momentarily in embarrassment.

“A little but…” she trailed off.

“But what?”

“It’s so silly. All I did in my last entry was ask all these questions that have no answer.”

“Would you like to read some of it?” Bimori asked.

Cybrella looked over at the journal that was on the table. She’d brought it to each session, like Bimori asked, but they rarely referred to it and this was the first time that Bimori asked her to read from it.

She took it in one tentacle and fidgeted with it, passing it from tentacle to tentacle, not opening it.

“Did you hear they approved the new mission? They’re going to launch a probe in the direction of the alien planet.”

“I had not,” Bimori said earnestly. While he was mildly interested, he had enough to think about with his patients and couldn’t worry about a whole other species. The way his own species was going—progressively diminishing birthrates, the isolation epidemic, not to mention how under some less than stellar leadership, medical science had stopped advancing and was leaving more people at risk for life-threatening diseases—soon there wouldn’t be anyone left to think the big thoughts or reach out to communicate with others within… well, the worst-case predictions were saying two generations.

“Oh you should definitely look up the mission brief! So many things are coming together to make this work! They’re going to use a solar sail and include some of our DNA and… get this… instructions on how to contact us back!”

“That’s…”

“Incredible? Right?” Cybrella said. Her initial hesitation to talk about anything today had completely turned around as she spoke of the mission. “And you know what I did? I applied for all the open positions and ways to participate!”

Bimori wasn’t sure that was the right thing to do, since it could only stand to drive a wedge between Cybrella and others here on their own planet. He decided to try another line of questioning.

“Cybrella, imagine one of those aliens were here with us. What would you say to… it?”

“Oh, it would be a ‘he’ for sure. You know I get along with ‘hes’ better than other ‘shes’.”

“Ok, what would you say to him?” Bimori thought it harmless to indulge in the fantasy that the aliens were similarly gendered, even though he knew there were endless possibilities with that genetic feature.

“I’d ask him what about the moons and stars? I’d ask what he thought about my life so far? What about my dream? What about—”

“Your dream?” Bimori interrupted.

Cybrella looked down and shone in a blush.

“I told you this, didn’t I?”

Bimori looked back at his notes. If she had told him about a dream recently, he hadn’t recorded it. And dreams were so rare that he couldn’t imagine either not writing it down or not remembering it.

“No, tell me.”

“I saw him. The alien. They don’t look like us, but it didn’t matter to him. It was quiet on a street, near midnight, clear, and windy. And he saw me. Do you understand? He saw me.”

“Did anything happen? Or was it—he—the alien, was he just standing there?”

“That’s just it! He was asking me the big questions, but they were about things I didn’t understand. He asked, ‘what about aeroplanes? And what about ships that drank the sea?” Cybrella said. “Do you know those words?”

“No,” Bimori said, waving his tentacles to express that he was baffled.

“I think that’s just it,” Cybrella said. “We both have the same big questions. The biggest one, you know?”

“No, I don’t,” Bimori said.

“What about everything?” Cybrella said. “What about everything.”

Bimori closed his notepad slowly. For the first time since Cybrella walked into his clinic, he didn’t have an answer. He looked at her instead. “What about everything,” he whispered back, and let it be enough.

What did you think of the story?

Simply reply and let me know what you think! (I treasure feedback!) Or do any of these things:

Leave a comment

Share

And of course, subscribe so you get notified when I post new stories/newsletters!

Subscribe now

Keep reading because I routinely participate in group pomotions with other Indie Authors. This is one of the ways we help each other get the word our about our books. There are a couple this month! Check out all sorts of fiction here:

Over at The BIG Sci-Fi podcast, we’ve recently released some fantastic episodes to include recent interviews with Megan Leathers (Pam in “For All Mankind”) and Marc Okrand (creator of the Klingon Language)! Remember that The BIG Sci-Fi podcast is on all the major platforms!

Are you on Facebook? Come join our private FB group where we discuss episodes, host weekly polls, and other fun! Just make sure to agree to the group rules when you send in the join request!

What’s next?

Continuing my hard work on the Annotated Robot Galaxy Series and T is for Time Travel, especially getting ready for the Beta Read of the latter.

Today’s picture is from the recent Capclave literary convention. Saturday evening at Capclave is always the “mass autograph” event and I got to share my table with fellow word-slingers Doc Coleman and Lawrence M. Schoen. Between the three of us, we cover a wide array of fiction! Check out there stuff (after you’re done checking out mine. ;) )

All always, thanks for being here and reading all of stuff. Remember you can reply anytime with questions/comments/feedback!

Until next time… be kind, be well!

-Adeena

I know last time I said I was going to not push out this newsletter every other week.

But I couldn’t wait another two weeks to do this…

No, I wasn’t lying. And in the two weeks since I last sent out this newsletter, I was rewatching Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country (to prep for a BIG Sci-Fi Podcast episode where we decided to talk about that movie) and I love how they weaved in throughout the script the bit about Vulcan’s not lying… so every time Spock said something that could have been a lie, Valeris, the other Vulcan character would ask:

“A lie?”

And each time, Spock had a different response that explained the… deviation from the truth. An omission. An error. A choice. That last one was Valeris responding when it was Spock’s turn to ask “a lie” and I think a choice, at least in her case, was exactly synonymous with “a lie.”

In my case, saying my choice to put out this newsletter this morning was definitely not a lie, in the sense that two weeks ago, based on everything I knew and thought and believed, I had no intention on doing this. But as time passed and things changed, I changed my mind.

50% of that change of mind (Oh!! Whenever anyone mentions “changing their mind” I instantly hear Spock in my head from Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home say “Is there something wrong with the one I have?”) is because Capclave, a local SFF literary convention, is this weekend. If you’re local-ish to me (aka Maryland, DC, NoVA, etc), come out to Capclave! Here’s what my schedule is lookin’ like:

The other 50% of why you’re hopefully still reading is my new Call for Beta Readers!

Over the next 2-3 weeks, I’m looking for folks who are interested in Beta Reading T is for Time Travel. This book will be the first of the T-Set, the follow-on to The Robot Galaxy Series.

I expect that most of the beta readers will have read at least the first book or two in that series, however, I do need at least 2 or 3 people who HAVE NOT read The Robot Galaxy Series! I will need the POV of readers who first start in my Robot Galaxy Universe with this book… So please, if you’re interested, no matter what you have or haven’t read of mine, fill out this form:

https://forms.gle/yub3HPg8UKWUiBC98

I will be spending 2-3 weeks collecting responses and should be ready for the beta read itself at about the 2nd week of October and I’m hoping that the folks who beta read can finish by the end of October.

That’s about it for today.

Except a reminder about those books… and yep, if you’ve been looking for an excuse to start The Robot Galaxy Series because you want to beta read T is for Time Travel, now is a GREAT time to do so! My recommendation if you’re doing this to prep for beta reading is to read at least the first 2 books in the series (Crazy Foolish Robots, and Robots, Robots Everywhere!).

Links: Lunar Logic | Robot Galaxy Series | Final Orbit | Objective Reality

What’s next?

Hopefully it’s obvious that my focus at the moment is T is for Time Travel. Simple.

I still do have a bonus pic for today:

It was a tough decision between this and one of my cats, Ruby, in an unusual but super cute pose. But I recently acquired several new art (how-to) books for my collection and one of them about practicing art/drawing (oy — can’t remember the name of that book… and am feeling way too lazy to get up and look… so if you’re interested, comment/reply to this email and I’ll post/respond) advocates the “continuous line” technique… something I haven’t played around with in a VERY long time. I did a bunch of small drawings on the app I use on my phone for digital art, and I’m really happy with how this one came out.

I had some friends over for dinner last weekend and one of them said, “my mother drilled it in to me that one must bring a hostess gift” which turned out to be flowers and as I was continuous line drawing all the things… well, like I said: this turned out to be my fave.

All always, thanks for being here and reading all of stuff. Remember you can reply anytime with questions/comments/feedback!

Until next time… be kind, be well!

-Adeena

First, I have a little reminder that at least for the next few months, I’m cutting back on this newsletter to once a month (the first Thursday of the month). As much as I love putting this thing out—in large part because I love the emails and comments I get from y’all as a response—my recently funded Kickstarter means I’m now on some self-imposed deadlines to get some T-Set books out as well as the Annotated Robot Galaxy Series. Writing this newsletter breaks my flow on those in a way I can’t do right now.

I will however, sometimes use that “in-between” time to send an email… like a call for beta readers for the first T-Set book, T is for Time Travel, that you should look for in your email in about two weeks.

But I have a piece of flash fiction today!

Before we get into that, here’s my usual plug for all the books and stories I have out there, with their links:

Links: Lunar Logic | Robot Galaxy Series | Final Orbit | Objective Reality

Also make sure to read to the end of this newsletter and check out other Indie writings! (And my bonus pic at the end.)

The idea for this story started maybe… a decade ago?

I’m fond of telling people that while I’m an avid reader, I read probably 75% non-fiction and only 25% fiction. That 75% non-fiction is fuel and fodder for A LOT of ideas that turn into stories, or details in my novels.

About a decade ago is when I read the book Salt: A World History by Mark Kurlansky.

Some of my favorite non-fiction to read are these “micro-histories.” I don’t know if that’s a formal category, but my local Barnes & Noble seems to have a continuous display table with that title.

In fact, the last time I was in B&N, I took a photo of that table display to compare which of those books I’ve read and which I haven’t. (Salt: A World History still sits on that table.)

That “micro” TBR list includes such things as The Secret History of Wonder Woman, Over My Dead Body: Unearthing the Hidden History of America’s Cemeteries and Index, A History of the: A Bookish Adventure from Medieval Manuscripts to the Digital Age.

But back to Salt.

I love salt. I didn’t always. I grew up in the 80s, and the only salt I knew was the very fine-grained iodized table salt. Yuck.

I still don’t like that stuff.

But around the time I read the book, I was also watching a lot of Food Network cooking competition shows and infused in that were often discussions of using salt. This is when I learned that not all salt is the same, taste-wise, and taste all the salts I did!

I’m currently in love with a particular brand of Celtic Sea Salt.

But the book went deeper into the history and well… we humans can’t live without salt. We need it.

Enter Adeena’s sci-fi brain that also thinks a lot about humans leaving Earth… we’ll need to bring salt with us. For the foreseeable future, any space exploration that involves humans will mean taking everything we need from Earth.

That includes salt.

I started to conceive some story ideas around this. I’ve written a handful of pages. It wasn’t really coming together. I wanted to write a novella about humans out in the galaxy, still dependent on Earth salt. But with the Robot Galaxy Series work and Lunar Logic and all, this is one of dozens of ideas I have on the back burner.

Until recently. I had a conversation with a friend… and I wanted to write up a little tidbit of that convo. I’m deliberately not saying what that was ‘cause I think it would be fun to ask you to guess!

The important thing to know before you go on to read The Salt Bar is that this is not what I had originally envisioned. And once again, I think I have the problem that maybe this isn’t really a flash fiction story… maybe this is a scene in a larger work.

But I must say… I really enjoyed writing this. The thing I most love about writing is sitting down and discovering it as I go. I didn’t know the main character’s name until I realized I needed a name. I had no idea what was going to happen, what each of them were going to say, or even the main character’s backstory until the words came out.

I just knew it was supposed to be about salt, with my friend’s bit thrown in.

Please read on and let me know what you think! (Either send me an email, or post a comment on Substack)

The Salt Bar

Soren Trask deactivated his NeuroLens as he reached the entryway to the bar. Its heads-up display had guided him here immediately after disembarking on Terra Dock.

As he walked through, every eye in the place—all human—was on him. The tourist guides he’d purchased—the ones his dad told him he was wasting his money on—were spot on.

First, they accurately predicted that there’d be little to no non-humans on Terra Dock, and certainly none in the Salt Bar.

Second—and this was the part he was most grateful for—they accurately predicted that as soon as he crossed the threshold, everyone would put down their drink and stare at him, waiting for him to decide if he would stay or if he would go.

Soren surveyed the room. Knowing this ritual began centuries ago with an eccentric engineer whose name was lost to history meant that Soren knew before he walked in that the last thing he would do was turn around and leave.

He’d come too far and sacrificed too much to get here.

Soren took one of the open seats at the bar. As soon as he did, everyone resumed drinking their drinks, having their conversations, and even playing a very old-fashioned game in the corner that he didn’t recognize. He briefly considered reactivating his NeuroLens for more information when he was interrupted.

“What can I get you, hon?”

Soren blinked. He understood the words, but the accent was unlike any he’d ever heard in real life.

She must be from Earth, he thought.

“I’ll have a Level 4 Salted Tonic.”

The corner of the woman’s mouth turned up.

“So did you just step off the ship that brought you here or have you even found your hotel room yet?”

“How did you…”

“That’s straight out of the tourist guidebook. Now let me guess, it said to expect the drink to have a ‘bold, full-brine flavor, like drinking seawater, only more refined.’”

Soren blushed.

Neither said anything else as the woman got out a squat tumbler and filled it with a liquid before opening up a container and taking out a spoonful of salt to mix in. As she replaced the lid on the salt jar and pushed it back next to several other similar size containers, Soren’s jaw went slack as he realized he must be looking at several kilograms of different salts.

She winked as she set the drink down in front of him.

“Welcome to Terra Dock.”

Before Soren could thank her, a deep voice barked, “Give me a storm brine, Dead Sea Cut.”

The bartender grabbed a mug by its handle and put it under a tap.

“See? That’s how a local orders.” The corner of her mouth lifted, as if she’d had the same interaction with hundreds of tourists.

Soren said nothing but smiled weakly and took a sip of his drink. He felt the man’s eyes weighing on him.

“Tourist? What brings you here?” the man said as the bartender handed him his mug. He raised it, then stopped. “Don’t answer that, let me guess.”

He paused, then took a gulp of his drink.

“School trip? No. Running away from home? No. No one in their right mind would head here.”

He paused to take another gulp.

“I was hoping to head planetside. I wanted to meet Troy Talden.”

Deep-voice took another sip and without taking his eyes off Soren said, “Talla, did you hear that? He wants to head ‘planetside’ and is looking to meet with Troy.”

“I just want a job,” Soren said, trying not to sound too helpless or hopeless. “I have the proper work permits and—”

“Well, before you meet with Troy—if you even can—don’t ever say ‘planetside.’ It sounds like you’ve spent your life on space stations and ships. And what kind of job are you looking for, anyway? Only work here is in the mines.”

“I’m an engineer…”

“…and you are running away from something?”

There was a pause.

“Or someone.”

Soren stared at his drink. Before deep-voice could continue, Talla grunted from behind the bar.

“This damn computer,” she said, whacking a console from the side.

“What’s wrong with it?” Soren asked.

“It is always losing its connection to the station.”

“Mind if I take a look?” Soren offered.

Talla made a gesture that Soren took to mean ‘have at it.’ Soren came around to the side of the bar, tapped the screen a few times. He turned his NeuroLens back on, and while Talla and the deep-voiced man watched him, wondered if they even had their own NeuroLens. It might not be common here. Back home, more than half of everyone had one.

The heads-up display of the NeuroLens allowed Soren to run a diagnostic and see the readout of both the station’s network and the bar’s console.

“Your console is fine,” Soren announced. “It’s the station. Something’s choking out the connections.”

“Oh not again,” an irritated Talla spit out. “Troy, can you speak to them?”

Soren’s head whipped around to deep-voice.

“Troy? You’re Troy Talden?”

Troy winked.

Before Soren could ask all the questions like why not announce himself immediately, or whether or not he’d just passed some unspoken initiation into Terra Dock’s inner circle, Troy spoke.

“Stay here for a while. When I get back, we’ll talk about jobs. I might have something at HQ.”

“What about the mines?”

“I suspect your skills will be more valuable elsewhere,” Troy kept his gaze on Soren, lingering a little too long.

“In the meantime, Talla can tell you all about the traditions we keep that tourists would never know,” Troy said, looking at Talla who was listening, but wiping down the bar as she did.

With that, Troy left.

Soren swirled the salty tonic he’d nearly forgotten he’d ordered only a few minutes ago. Close enough, he thought. Maybe close enough to finally matter.

What did you think of the story?

Do you want to guess which was the bit that I incorporated from my friend? Simply reply and let me know what you think! (I treasure feedback!) Or do any of these things:

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Keep reading because I routinely participate in newsletter swaps with other Indie Authors. This is one of the ways we help each other get the word our about our books. So please — check these folks out and see if they’re for you!

You might enjoy this book by Dave Dobson that was a semifinalist in the first Self-Published Science Fiction Competition (the SPSFC) organized by Hugh Howey (author of Silo):

I also participate in group promos. There are a few this month! Check out all sorts of fiction here:

Over at The BIG Sci-Fi podcast, Season 9 has begun! We kicked it off with filmmaker Jeffrey Morris and a discussion of his brand new documentary film, The Eagle Obsession. Jeffrey recently finished work on his documentary film titled The Eagle Obsession and we had the privilege of screening it and then discussing, with Jeffrey, it's impact on us. This episode features a sneak peak into his amazing film, as well as one of our deeper discussions about life, fandom, and more! Remember that The BIG Sci-Fi podcast is on all the major platforms!

Are you on Facebook? Come join our private FB group where we discuss episodes, host weekly polls, and other fun! Just make sure to agree to the group rules when you send in the join request!

What’s next?

Working hard on the Annotated Robot Galaxy Series and T is for Time Travel. Look for an email from me within the month that will be a call for beta readers for the latter!

But I also started implementing a plan to use Ikea’s “Billy” bookcase units as fake “built-in” bookshelves in my house. This means… playtime with boxes for Ruby and Pearl!

All always, thanks for being here and reading all of stuff. Remember you can reply anytime with questions/comments/feedback!

Until next time… be kind, be well!

-Adeena

Do not hurt yourself trying to pronounce today’s newsletter title.

There’s some minor change afoot, but before we get into that, I have two things to say/announce:

1. THANK YOU THANK YOU to all my backers for helping my first Kickstarter get funded! I am now busy making all the things happen… which relate to this newsletter and I’ll cover more below

2. If you’re new to this newsletter (more than 100 of you were added this week) then you might not know about all my books and stories available (although keep reading this newsletter today for a discount on some of them):

Links: Lunar Logic | Robot Galaxy Series | Final Orbit | Objective Reality

If you’re in a situation where even spending a little money is not something you can do… you can still be supportive by sharing this campaign on social media. Another way to support me (and other indie authors like me) is to request my books at your local library!

Also make sure to read to the end of this newsletter—there’s a little discount buried in there, and news about newsletter changes—and check out other Indie writings! (And my bonus pic at the end.)

One of the websites I don’t visit as often as I’d like is The Phrontistery. Which is a thinking place. As in, that’s the definition of the word “phrontistery” and I like to think that cultivating phrontisteries is something a writer like me does.

But that site has lists and lists of fun words and I just spent almost an hour looking for the perfect one or two to describe my current situation.

Auturgy… self-action or independent activity. That sounds a lot like being a writer, especially an independent one. And amphigory? It’s nonsense. Which is half of what I come up with.

All this to say is that… I’m writing.

Specifically, with my recent Kickstarter funding I’m working on two main things:

1. The Annotated Robot Galaxy Series (henceforth known as A-RGS)

2. T is for Time Travel, the first in the T-Set books that come after the RGS

(They will both eventually be available to all, but Kickstarter backers will get them first.)

The A-RGS… I’m literally going through the entire series and adding in annotations. Several per chapter. In some cases, several per page. It’s been a lot of fun to do and I should have started months ago. Because of the fun.

But here’s one of the important things to know about T is for Time Travel… in a few short weeks, likely during the next newsletter, I’m going to be putting out a call for beta readers!

As in the past, I’ll have a sign-up form and choose from those who fill out the form to do a beta read.

“Adeena, do we have to have read The Robot Galaxy Series before hand?”

That’s an excellent question.

Answer: Mostly. But not entirely.

As in, yes, my focus will be on beta readers who’ve read all 4 books already, but I will be looking for one or two who’ve not completed the series and maybe one or two who haven’t yet because it’s possible the T-Set books will be an entryway for some.

The beta read sign up form will ask questions about whether or not you’ve read some or all of the books and such.

If you really want to read them now… well, you’re in luck… I have a special discount for the ebook version of the Robot Galaxy Series books (and ok, you can grab Lunar Logic ebook—or audiobook—with this discount code as well) that will be active until the end of the month. Go to my shopify store, the digital book page and use the code RGS50AUG25 when you checkout.

In the meantime, I’ve got a few more energy pennies back (read the last newsletter for that topic) and am excitedly working on this new material!

One more change in the works… For at least a few months, instead of sending this newsletter out every other week, starting in September, I need to reduce the frequency to once a month. At least for the next six months or so. But… there’s a higher chance each of those will have that flash fiction that you haven’t seen from me in a while…

Keep reading, please!

Keep reading because I routinely participate in newsletter swaps with other Indie Authors. This is one of the ways we help each other get the word our about our books. So please — check these folks out and see if they’re for you!

Can a space station street performer stop a con man from preying on the innocent? I have no idea! If you’d like to find out, check out this novelette by Sherry D. Ramsey:

I also participate in group promos. There are a few this month! Check out all sorts of fiction here:

At The BIG Sci-Fi podcast, we’re in the middle of our in-between season break. So we decided to revisit some of our favorite episodes!

Steve’s was:

Brian’s:

Cris’ was about the sci-fi movie “Moonfall” (and this was before we were doing specific art per episode!):

and mine:

…which might not come as a surprise to anyone!

If you’re on Facebook, come join our private FB group where we discuss episodes, host weekly polls, and other fun! Just make sure to agree to the group rules when you send in the join request!

What’s next?

What’s next? I think I covered that above! A-RGS and T is for Time Travel. Very simple.

Today’s bonus pic… I would love for you all to respond/comment with captions to this:

All always, thanks for being here and reading all of stuff. Remember you can reply anytime with questions/comments/feedback!

Until next time… be kind, be well!

-Adeena

A lot can happen in 24 hrs…. (Or 15… since as I type and send this newsletter out today, there are 15 hours left to go.)

So I haven’t given up yet on this Kickstarter even though we’re only at the 75% funding mark!

If you haven’t heard (most likely because you’re new here), then let me tell or remind you that the Kickstarter to turn The Robot Galaxy Series (starting with Book 1, Crazy Foolish Robots) into an audiobook, and start getting the follow-on T-Set books out into the world is LIVE!

Please, please, please, please (with sugar and a cherry on top) consider backing my campaign!

As of this newsletter, we’re about 75% funded and the campaign ends at 9pm ET.

There are reward tiers for those of you who are new to The Robot Galaxy Series (check out the “Newbie Tier”) and tiers for those of you who have read all 4 books so far—check out pretty much every other tier which includes everything like an “Annotated” edition of the series, to the new T-set books, to the ability to get Tuckerized in the new T-set books!

If you’re in a situation where even spending a little money is not something you can do… you can still be supportive by sharing this campaign on social media. Another way to support me (and other indie authors like me) is to request my books at your local library!

Before continuing on, here’s my usual reminder about all the books and stories I have out there, with their links:

Links: Lunar Logic | Robot Galaxy Series | Final Orbit | Objective Reality

Also make sure to read to the end of this newsletter and check out other Indie writings! (And my bonus pic at the end.)

Launching this Kickstarter and watching it slowly garner interest has been… a challenge… this last month.

So much of a challenge that it took me deep into a place I didn’t think existed: it took me to writer’s block territory.

Yes, up until recently, I was one of those who refused to believe writer’s block was a thing. But while I’ve done little else but think about writing this last month, I haven’t been writing.

Instead, I did a lot of reading about writing and writer’s block and will heartily recommend these two books:

Becca Syme has a bunch of others but these two are the ones I read and in the order that you see presented here. I’m not even sure if I can tell you how I stumbled upon these, but they led me to binge a lot of her podcast, QuitCast, and read another book: The 5 Second Rule by Mel Robbins and watch her Ted Talk. (She’s got a lot of content on YouTube, but this particular talk is the first one that gets reference where she mentions the #5SecondRule at the end. If you like her, and find her helpful, definitely binge a bunch of her content. Very motivating to do the thing you want to do, whatever that thing is for you.)

None of those links are affiliate btw.

I’m passing this all on because while I found this content to help me get unstuck with my writing, all this content is helpful for, well, everything. Becca’s burnout book talks about burnout in a way that’s general and not really just for writers. Her book on writer’s block talks about the things that get us stuck in lots of areas of our life.

And Mel Robbin’s 5 second rule? You can apply that s@#% to anything! Anything!

All this taught me, and I’m going to tell you, that we rarely actually feel like doing the things we want to do… we’re waiting to feel like it, we’re waiting for inspiration, we’re waiting for the perfect time.

I thought I knew this. For several years, I’ve been in the habit of getting up at least an hour or so before the rest of my household wakes up to write. Whether or not I felt like it. Because if I didn’t, the act of not writing and not having written was terrible (for me). But something has been off for a while and I’ve been working past that because when I wake up tomorrow, I’ll either be working on fulfilling this Kickstarter or… well, I’ll have choices on what next.

The fact that I don’t know (and haven’t known all month) whether this Kickstarter will fully fund has indeed kept me in a state of limbo that’s been very distracting. That’s a terrible excuse (for me) for not writing, but that’s what happened. Although after reading all that stuff, it’s probably that I have been a little burned out, I’ve needed some more “energy pennies” (that’s a term Becca Syme came up with) and this semi-forced break.

Because when I wake up tomorrow? Well, I think I told myself that tomorrow—Friday—will be the last day of this break as I bask in the knowledge that the Kickstarter funded or not. Because the day AFTER I’ll get to work…

On the T-Set.

Yes, I am finally feeling motivated to get back to the Robot Galaxy universe and start getting those books out (most of the 4 planned books are drafted). I’m excited and can’t wait and hope you’re excited to read them!

Keep reading, please!

Keep reading because I routinely participate in newsletter swaps with other Indie Authors. This is one of the ways we help each other get the word our about our books. So please — check these folks out and see if they’re for you!

If you like alien invasions and supernatural humans out there to battle them and save Earth, then this book by Ardith A. Price might be for you:

I also participate in group promos. There are a few this month! Check out all sorts of fiction here:

At The BIG Sci-Fi podcast, we had one more bonus episode for Season 8. We released the audio recording of my co-hosts and I on stage hosting Terry Farrell (Jadzia Dax fromDS9) at Trek Long Island two months ago:

…and if I had known that this pic would be used like this… oy… I would have applied a filter or something! LOL

If you’re on Facebook, come join our private FB group where we discuss episodes, host weekly polls, and other fun! Just make sure to agree to the group rules when you send in the join request!

What’s next?

What’s next? It still all depends on this Kickstarter and whether or not it funds! (If you read this entire newsletter you know this already and I’ve already mentioned that I’ll likely be working on the T-Set books.)

But… what about Moonbase Mayhem, you ask (the sequel to Lunar Logic)? That is going to go on the back-burner for a bit. Which, honestly, I need a break from it. This time last year, I thought I’d have a complete draft by January or so and the fact that I’m not tells me I need to walk away from it for a bit.

But… I’m excited to work in the Robot Galaxy universe again and get more of those books in your hands!

Summer is birthday season here in my universe… and today’s bonus pic was taken exactly 2 days before my birthday which was a little over a week ago:

That’s me, with one of my fave spaceships in all of sci-fi in the background. Not only is it my fave/one of my faves… it’s the first one I ever wanted to fly. It’s the first one I ever wondered “how could it fly?” It’s the first one I ever wanted to deconstruct the design of.

Plus… Han Solo as co-pilot? Sign me up, please! (Unless that would make me a Wookie…)

All always, thanks for being here and reading all of stuff. Remember you can reply anytime with questions/comments/feedback!

Until next time… be kind, be well! (And please support my Kickstarter any way you can in these last few hours!)

-Adeena