Orbital Choas
This is the weekend, starting Saturday the 24th, where we read Orbital Chaos out loud and find last-minute issues with the story. I’m excited to get this book wrapped up, published, and out the door. Then I can get the next book going.
Orbital Chaos is good. There are several scenes that are quite funny, and sections that really draw you in. In fact, I’m reading it for the second time, since the rough draft has been completed, to find last-minute issues, and it’s easy for me to get through. Usually, by the time I’m reading a book for the second time, I’m totally done with reading it. This one has some really great scenes. So, if you haven’t gotten hooked into this series yet, you might want to try out Orbital Chaos and see what you think about it. There is a lot of conflict among the characters, not just the main team of 5. Oh no, I have a few new characters that really bring some fire to the arguments. But it’s not all fighting and arguing. No, they come together and use their strengths to overcome their “problem” in the end. And the robots? Well, they’re quite nasty and difficult to nail down and fix (if the word “fix” is the right word for it).
You just have to read the story to find out!
The Missing Link
I’m still defining which scenes will be in the story, and oh, this is so good. I’ve come to the point where Daphne has collected so many friends and foes that I only have to short-circuit them and combine them into scenes that make things go BANG! And, oh boy, is this story going to be crazy. I hate to build up a story and then write something that doesn’t deliver. You know the sales pitch: “Under promise and over deliver?” Well, I’m going to say that I’m really excited about this Daphne story. I still have some twists and details to work out, but the story is already so twisted and surprising that it’s going to leave the average Daphne fan wanting more. I’m not even sure how I pull off stuff like this, but odd things just pop into my brain, and WAMMO, something crazy happens in the story and just overshadows all the previous books.
As I’ve alluded to, I will be bringing back a lot of old characters. Some that I haven’t used since Dangerous Cargo (I hope I didn’t reveal too much… Nah). I have had to re-read some of the scenes of books I haven’t written since 2022 to make sure I have everything lined up. That’s when I discovered some things that I managed to get away with… You know, like what was the planet that Roberta lives on? I wrote two books with her as a character, and I never mentioned the planet she lived on. So, I had to come up with a name, which is Outpost X-17. Some generic designation created by a bureaucracy, probably from the Alliance, where they charted the planet, but they don’t care about it yet. Why? Because it’s too far away to include in their tax base. So, there’s a wild-west outpost there. Maybe only one town or a dozen, but there’s no official law there. Hence, the description in Dangerous Cargo. So there! Now it has a name.
If you want to know more details about The Missing Link, check out the Books In Progress web page for the book blurb. Or… there is a lead in at the end of Dust Bargain where Daphne and RUSTY talk about their next job.
In this book, I’m trying to pay more attention to RUSTY snark and humor, and to Daphne getting the upper hand earlier through some surprising twists (because she’s had enough life experiences to know better), but there will still be the same Daphne Blazefire Series tropes readers expect… You know, like the occasional RUSTY losing his head scene (as always, it’ll be something entertaining and I’ll try to disguise it so you don’t even see it coming).
Ah, maybe I’m just having too much fun writing these stories…