I just added another free book for email list subscribers. If you’ve already subscribed, you can run through the sign-up again to grab the new book. The new book is a short story that was a potential sub-plot for the Chronicles of Daphne series. I couldn’t fit it into the books I was writing, so I made it into a short, put a cover on it, and added it as a reader magnet.

In this story, the FTL drive fails before they reach their destination. When RUSTY reports that the ship will fly dangerously close to a neutron star, they seek shelter. Unfortunately, the radiation shelter is only large enough to fit one of them. Who will survive?

If you haven’t been signed up to my list yet, there is also an older short story that I wrote titled: “The Traveler.” This book is about an intelligent robotic probe built by scientists on Earth in the future. Faster than light has not been discovered yet, so it takes 44 years to reach the nearest star system. The story is written from the probe’s perspective and what he sees when he arrives at Alpha Centuri B. When the probe detects something that could be catastrophic for humans, he radios as much data as he can back to Earth. Unfortunately, the data takes over four years to reach Earth at the speed of light.

I had planned to write a series based on “The Traveler” but haven’t decided to commit to it yet (too many other stories in progress). The short story was to be an introduction to the theme of the story and then it would transition to a story about human survival. I had written 17k words of a rough draft but didn’t really like the story. If I ever pick that story up in the future, I’m going to spend some quality time re-plotting it.

I also have two books on Smashwords. Just click the link and search for “Frank DeCaire” in the search box at the top of the page. You’ll see “A New World” and “Rogue Phoenix.” Both books are short stories as well. The Rogue Phoenix book is one of the “The Chronicles of the Clavius Moon Colony” series. It’s the only one that is complete so far. I have another book that has the same characters that work in the satellite shop in progress. It’s an 18k rough draft, but I’d like to expand it into a full-size novel. I have rough plans and some outlines for the Clavius moon colony chronicles. Those books will follow different parts of the colony and overlap a little, but involve different sets of characters.