Squirrel!

So a couple of months ago, I set aside the first draft for Friends in Command (Sons of the Starfarers: Book IV) in order to let the story percolate a little in my mind. I do this from time to time, especially between deep revisions, in order to step back approach the story with a fresh mind. I’ve found that doing so tends to improve the quality of the story immensely.

I was fully intending to get back to Friends in Command this month (and still intend to do so eventually), but just as I was finishing up the 4.0 draft for Heart of the Nebula, I had this crazy awesome story idea pop into my head and I couldn’t not write it. It actually came to me right before I got to the last chapter, which led to this exasperated tweet:

Why do I always get my best ideas for new stories a chapter or two before I’m finished with my WIP? #amwriting

— Joe Vasicek (@onelowerlight) December 30, 2014

So anyways, the working title for the squirrel! project is Queen of the Falconstar. It’s a sci-fi action & adventure standalone (for now, heh) that takes place in the same universe as Sons of the Starfarers, but a few hundred years into the future. The Outworld frontier has been more or less tamed, and the Hameji are beginning to establish themselves on the outer reaches of human space. It’s a brutal and dangerous universe outside of the major stellar empires—which of course is where this story takes place.

It’s the main character, Zlata, that I’m really excited about. She’s crafty, pragmatic, resourceful, and slightly pessimistic, a little like Mara from Sons of the Starfarers but without all the trauma and daddy issues. She’s ruthless when she needs to be, but can be quite altruistic whenever it’s practical. Above all else, she’s a realist, accepting things as they are and preparing herself to deal with them accordingly.

The story starts when pirates capture her home station and carry her and her best friend off as slaves. It turns out, though, that these aren’t ordinary pirates—they’re Hameji tribesmen from the Outer Reaches. The captain, Lord Khasan Valdamar, is a young Hameji commander trying to establish himself and build a war fleet to his name. He doesn’t have much to work with, though, and in the brutal world of intertribal Hameji politics, a single miscalculation could lead to the annihilation of his small clan.

Through a daring combination of intrigue and romance, Zlata convinces him to take both her and her friend as wives, thus raising their status and securing their future. But this sets off a tribal war, which she soon discovers is far more of an adventure than she ever bargained for.

That’s the basic story idea that I’m working with, at least. Like I said, I’m way excited about it! I don’t have any idea how long it’s going to be or what it’s going to turn into, but this is basically how Star Wanderers got started and that turned out rather well.

So I’ll probably dive into this rabbit hole for the next month or so to see what’s down there. But don’t worry, I fully intend to write Friends in Command as well. At the very latest, that one should be out sometime in the summer, though it will probably be ready much sooner. And when Queen of the Falconstar is finished, I think you’re really going to like this one as well!