Ride the Startides
About the latest volume
Dear Readers,
I definitely had opinions on all the nonsense, lies, insults and pure BS this election season, but I expressed my opinion with my vote, and kept it all out of my stories, I want my writing to be a place where readers can go to escape from all that partisan turmoil, and find relief by getting lost in another world with characters they may have known for nearly 15 years. Yet by the end of Startides, Karpov and Fedorov will be looking at a problem that they have not been paying attention to in the Colonies, and it will force them to make some difficult and important choices and decisions.
They will also discover things in this volume that stretch the bounds of their imaginations, as they stretched mine. The meaning of the title here will not be immediately apparent, but you will discover it as Fedorov does. It was something I foreshadowed in volume #78, Dark Matters, and it answers a few questions Fedorov had about how the Shadows from the realm of Dark Matter move and travel long distances through interstellar space. It was also foreshadowed during the Mission to Altair. You’ll get to this discovery soon.
One thing leads to another in this volume, a staircase of events that start several missions, and then end where they began, in the Outworld Colonies with some hard decisions to make. Part of the work to be done is the cleanup to purge the remnant of the Colony Virus from the Colonies, and the Homeworld as well. In Contagion, I dappled in story lines that presented one of most horrific genres in Science Fiction, the dread and fear engendered by the altered self. No aliens appear, because every supposedly alien threat is just a life form on the planet or on Earth that has been mutated by the Colony Virus. This trope saw its birth in characters like Sergeant Mori Genda, who ends up developing a full “Borani Organ” at the back of his neck, and gaining Psychic powers in the novel Wild Zone. Ryan’s mission to first reconnoiter, the derelict DSC-108, also encountered the work of the Colony Virus when it began to experiment with Human mutations. And Captain Beckerman, who dies in the first two books of the Dharman Series, sees his DNA spawn the Beckermen, engineered by the Colony Virus and grown in plant pods in the Wild Zones of Dharma-6.
In Contagion, this fear of the altered self is now the dilemma Humanity must face on Earth. This is most evident in the scenes set near Trondheim in Norway, where mutated hybrid/Human beings emerge from the sea and fjord. These altered Humans become the monsters, and somewhere in that, and their behavior, I tickle the notion that there are monsters within us that we cover up with the layers of our civility, just as we cover our bare naked skin with clothing. So in Contagion, altered selves, be they from the sea or in the form of mutated land animals, are the antagonists. Now comes the landmark Volume #80, Startides.
The events of Contagion are presumed to be resolved by the time this volume begins, so this turns over all new ground, except one lose story line from the previous book is tied off here—that of the Genomorph, otherwise known as “Mother Heart.” This event coincides with Fedorov’s mission to inoculate the Planet Dharma-6 with the ES22 Phage to purge the Colony Virus there. It is a process that takes time, like your body builds up resistance to a new viral threat after inoculation with a vaccine. This accomplished, then things get stranger.
Again, it is the Genomorph that complicates one mission, and then leads to and launches another, but I will leave that for you to discover as you read. Things in this story will be like a series of falling dominoes, with one event or discovery leading to another, until a new and unexpected threat emerges at the end that then sets up the next book. I am presently still fishing for a title for that one, and I don’t want the title to give away the ending of Startides.
I know I have been writing at a blistering pace in the last several volumes. I used to finish a new book over a period of 60 days, but of late, the books have been coming ever 30 days, usually released by the 10th day of the next month. This follows my philosophy that when the story emerges from the depths of your imagination, by all means, sit down and write it. I make it a hard rule that I must write every day, and finish a minimum of eight book pages, or one chapter. This means that I should have a first draft ready for review in 30 to 36 days. But this season, I’ve been writing two to three chapters per day. I usually create an ante climax in the story starting around Part X. When I finish Part X, I then stop, and read what I have written thus far from Chapter 1 to Chapter 30. Then I write the conclusion, which often involves building a bridge to the story I want to tell in the next series volume. The last six chapters in Startides present one more complication or problem to challenge the main characters, and it builds up enough to create a kind of hook to the next book. Yes, there is a method to my madness.
While writing Science Fiction means that I have to inject the story with real science facts, I think I manage to keep that from bogging the story down, and make an effort to pace the story in a way that readers will want to get from one chapter to the next. Pacing is important. When I write a “hook” at the end of a chapter, I am, in effect, making a promise to the reader. This promise quietly says, if you continue on, this story will give you some payoff, and that is just part of the work a writer does with plot. After the merger of the Dharman Series and Kirov Series characters, I have more people to keep involved in that plot as the story unfolds. Note how important the work of Dr. Elena Chandros has become to the resolution of the confrontation with the Shadows. In like manner, each of the main characters gets some task to shoulder and a way to contribute their expertise to the outcome of these events.
Karpov and Fedorov remain the most prominent main characters, and the Ready Room becomes a setting for much of the strategy they devise to launch missions. I have written hundreds and hundreds of pages of dialogue between those two characters throughout the series. Now Karpov and Fedorov are more than colleagues, but also fast friends, and it is obvious how much Karpov depends upon Fedorov once that Ready Room door closes and they start their discourse—and all with Nikolin secretly listening through the tabletop intercom microphone. (He’s an analog for you, the reader.) Just wait until that becomes known. 😊 Of the main Kirov character set, Rodenko remains the eyes of the ship, Tasarov its ears, Nikolin its voice, Samsonov its strong right arm in battle, but the heart and brains are Fedorov and Karpov. Into this mix comes Ryan, Captain Harper, Lieutenant Gates, Caruso and Dr, Chandros from the Dharman Series, along with Commodore Tico, and the whole scaffolding of the Administration for Frontier Affairs, (AFA). Readers have already seen that Karpov does not like the AFA breathing down his neck, and some sparks star flying here in Startides to develop that inherent conflict between the AFA and the Colonial Navy that Karpov now commands.
Yet writing at this clip sometimes means that I am writing faster than people can read these tales. I can tell by checking sales that there is a clique of dedicated readers that have stayed right with me, as if they were surfing the Startides. These are the readers that scoop up each new volume in the week after it is released. The data also shows me that more readers are still moving along the line of books that make up the Earthforce Saga, and I also saw this in the Kirov Series as I moved into the second and third seasons.
Well, I’ll keep writing as the ideas and story scenes emerge in my mind, and I am forever grateful to all of you who are waiting there for the next volume to come out. I don’t do this to just print one shiny new book and stick it on my bookshelf. I do it for you.
So here is Startides, and I hope you enjoy the ride. You can find it here
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0DM9JR3FC