Hot off the presses just in time for Christmas Day: my new science-fiction romance novel “Heart of Proxima” is out! You can buy it in Kindle ebook or paperback form now! For the better part of this year I’ve been working on this story (see this, this, and this blog post), and now I feel the time is right to let it out into the world. So what’s this book about, this first full-length novel of mine in over a year (since “The Saga of the Ilithianades”!)? As the blurb I wrote says:
The year: 2099. The woman: Spadille. The mission: rocket under punishing g-force for months at a stretch, and rendezvous in the distant Oort cloud with the “Old Fleet”, a convoy of space habitats returning after 60 years from the even more distant Proxima Centauri system and its verdant ocean world of Thalassa. There she meets her lifelong idol Imogen of Thalassa, the woman who made humanity’s first contact with an alien intelligence on that planet, aged nearly a century but spry as ever as she looks forward to becoming one of the first humans to make an interstellar round trip. As the colonies hurtle toward the sun, and toward another alien intelligence far closer to home, Spadille will find not just her idol, but the man of her dreams: a new love, a new life, a romance from beyond the stars.
That’s about the size of it. Cool aesthetic space habitats, old-fashioned balls under the silvery light of the Oort cloud and the blinding fry-by close to the sun, makeovers and fashions in lush detail, romantic dates, ice-palace casinos under a permanent total solar eclipse where the leading girl shows off her mathematical and gambling prowess, there’s even a performing-artist music band who ski along with her for New Year 2100, not to mention the reveal of Imogen of Thalassa’s ultimate fate after all these years: touching terra firma as she turns a hundred years old, visiting what’s become of her native Midwest in the 22nd century, not to mention the first-ever (in a story of mine) meeting with the squid-like, cold, snow, yet very calculating alien intelligence from the depths of Enceladus.
Honestly, if any of that interests you and you want a fun romantic romp through a pleasant, nigh utopic, near-future universe this will be a book you’ll love; it’s some of my favorite work I’ve ever done, and I think it all really came together well in the writing. So what are you waiting for, intrepid reader? Crack open “Heart of Proxima” today!