Me with current and new members of the Royal Manticoran Navy at MarCon on May 8, 2022.
The convention was great fun. If you want to know more than that, sign up for my newsletter.
 Hi Friends,
I'm delighted that Covid rates are down enough locally that we get to have an in-person convention again. I've been invited to be a writer guest at the 57th MarCon in Columbus, Ohio. Those of you who are newsletter subscribers already got the details about how to get a membership and what the hotel room rates were. For everyone else, sign up for the newsletter! That will get you all the early news next time. And I'll repeat the MarCon details at the bottom. Drum roll, please! Cue trumpets... Presenting my 57th MarCon Panel Schedule! Friday, May 6th, 2022 4:00PM The Business of Writing, Salon A 5:00 PM Schrodinger's Cat and the Felines of Science, Salon A 5:00 PM TeaRMN (A tea hosted by a member of The Royal Manticoran Navy. It runs for two hours, so I can catch the last half.) Salon 113 8:00 PM Conventions in the Pandemic Aftermath, Salon 113 Saturday, May 7th, 2022 2:00 PM How to Run a Workshop That Last for Decades, Salon A 4:00 PM The Joy of Convening, Salon 113 6:00 PM How to Get That Guest, Salon 113 Sunday, May 8th, 2022 10:00 AM String Theory Analysis and Deconstruction (AKA Fan Knit-In), Salon 113 I hope to see many of you there. Covid is always threatening to take these sorts of gatherings away from us, but I live in hope. Happy Convening! Joelle Presby  We Dare: No Man’s Land is available now!
WE DARE is a science fiction anthology series focused on humanity surviving against all odds. In this third anthology NO MAN’S LAND brings together a great cohort of contributing writers, each telling a story with a female lead. In my story, “On Space Tigers” I bring you to the Rings of Saturn where the worst adversaries in a dangerous space environment are the other humans. Rhea Sadou leads a team of prospectors working out of a string of Ring space stations to scoop out and process the gases of Saturn’s outer atmosphere into lucrative helium three (he-three) fuel. They sell often to repeat customers in and near Earth orbit and more rarely to space ships headed out of Sol System spreading humanity into the stars. The outbounder ship Poyekhali paid for half their he-three in advance. The outbounder ship’s communications have been smooth, and one of the pricy he-three scoopers has been acting up, so Rhea put young Shulie in charge of coordinating with Poyekhali. The young spacer should be able to handle a routine buyer’s inspection of the fuel payload, and Rhea’s engineers have done the checks on the launcher for sending it on an intercept course along the Poyekhali’s outward route. But the Poyekhali’s shuttle isn’t coming to buy. They don’t have the second half payment, and they have to have their he-three for Poyekhali to make her rendezvouses for resource extraction with deep space objects along her plotted route. The shuttle naive Shulie is expecting will arrive not with buyers but with thieves. And they are first time thieves who’ve never hijacked a station before or known anyone else who has. If Rhea can protect her station from desperate fools, can she also find a way to find and fight the true villains? Baen Books is giving you my Multiverse short story "All Orca Go To Heaven" for free on their website this month at www.baen.com/. If you are looking for it after March 2021, you can get it from the Baen Free Library Free Stories 2021 or https://www.baen.com/orca. This story is set after the events of The Road To Hell. If you are not yet familiar with the Multiverse, here's a quick summary of who is who. In the Multiverse series, two worlds spanning human civilizations occupy their own chains of Earths connected through naturally occurring portals. They have been at war since first contact on Hell’s Gate when a powerful telepath, the daughter of the Sharonan Cetacean Ambassador Shalassar, broadcast the defeat of her Sharonan unit of explorers by an Arcanan military exploration force. The Arcanans have magic, often placed in crystals and used to control magically created animals from dragons and griffins to three-headed hydras. The Sharonans have telepaths and steam power level technology. While the Arcanan magic beasts have been an aerial force and a logistical powerhouse, the intelligent whales, dolphins, and orca back on the Sharonan home world have not previously involved themselves in the humans’ conflict.   The final Phases of Mars short story collection, TROUBLE IN THE WIND, is available today!
Lieutenant Marshall and Chief Hays who first got involved in defending the Port of Doula in German Kamerun back in THOSE IN PERIL (Phases of Mars 1), and who then were sent to Germany itself to study the possible military uses of the aeroplane in TO SLIP THE SURLY BONDS (Phases of Mars 2), have returned for a final short story. Our politically-connected lieutenant and his long suffering chief are recalled from Germany as Vice President Marshall prepares to run for the US presidency. As relations with the Triple Entente powers continue to sour, US military strategists regard the existence of British Overseas Territories in the Americas with growing concern. A raid on the most likely poorly defended Falkland Islands outpost seems like just the thing, and a certain military hero who proves overly trying for his political handlers has to be sent somewhere… Patrick Doyle and I hope you enjoy ’The Blubber Battle: The First Falklands Campaign.' The multi world leader endorsed alternate history short story series has a new release! TO SLIP THE SURLY BONDS is available now.  Historical Change You Can Believe In!  Make Alternate History Great Again!  Buy these books. Or else. In the middle of the writing of my TO SLIP THE SURLY BONDS story, I had a six pound ten ounce schedule conflict requiring me to temporarily switch projects in order to give birth to a future reader, so I followed time-honored navy tradition and drafted a co-writer: friend and aviator Patrick Doyle. Our story “Friends In High Places” follows a certain politically-connected lieutenant and his over-worked chief from the Port of Doula in West Afrika to German-occupied Douai, France. The Second Lady of the United States is being badgered to exert her influence to keep the Vice President’s nephew away from risky escort duty. The Aide to Naval Operations would greatly like to have first hand reporting about developments in military aviation. And the Chairman of the Democratic Committee even has opinions. The lieutenant is here to fly planes.  Available now: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07XK1QH2H
If you missed the Kickstarter for LOST SIGNALS, you aren't too late. You can still buy the short story collection directly from Baen or from Amazon.
And for the completists out there who might have missed these other releases, I have short stories in STAR DESTROYERS and in THOSE IN PERIL (Phases of Mars Anthology, Vol. 1) as well.  Happy Release Day!
THOSE IN PERIL, a fantastic naval-themed military alternate history short story collection, with new fiction from me is out today! Amazon link: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07NPG7QFW My story is "A Safe Wartime Posting." It's a about a WWI fight everyone has spent weeks and weeks on in high school history classes and already knows everything about: The Kamerun and German Defense of the Port of Doula in West Afrika! Oh wait. Maybe it didn't make it into your particular history class. But it did happen, if not quite the way I wrote it. What if Woodrow Wilson, the United States presidential re-election winner in part for "He Kept Us Out of the War," had his stroke just a couple years earlier? And what if his vice president had a nephew who the family wanted to set up for a post-service political career without exposing him to the risks of naval escort duty? Africa should be full of nice safe places to wait out the European war, don't you think? After all, the colonial powers even signed an agreement in advance promising each other not spread the war to the southern continent. Europeans wouldn't break a treaty involving Africa, would they? And even if they did, there'd be no politically connected observers around to notice, right? |
AuthorJoelle Presby is a writer of fantasy, science fiction and alternate history. Archives
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