I have two completed works I’m querying at #Pit2Pub on July 15, 2015. This post is to give curious minds some more details regarding each of them. If any of the participating publishers is interested in either of these, I will gladly look over that publisher’s guidelines for submission and send them whatever they ask for.

The Kingdom Come novels are polyamorous SciFi Romance. The heat level is high, bordering erotic romance. Traditional marriages on Kingdom Come consist of several men and several women in a close, committed, and loving relationship. The focus of the stories is finding the Happily Ever After.

The Cities of Luna is a series of SciFi shorts set on the moon in the near future. Although written for adults, the stories are family oriented and are generally close to a PG rating. The focus of the stories is the everyday lives of the Loonies.

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I am querying a duology set on Kingdom Come. The Jubilation of the Southern Cross is complete at 72,000 words and Hearthsong is complete at 85,000 words. Together, the duology is titled From Earth to Kingdom Come. Both manuscripts are available, in part or full, upon request. This duology is the beginning of a planned series.

THE JUBILATION OF THE SOUTHERN CROSS: BOOK ONE OF FROM EARTH TO KINGDOM COME

Bethany intends to spend her four-month star voyage lounging by the pool and going over the mounds of data her new employers send her every time The Jubilation of the Southern Cross drops out of FTL. She ignores the constant flirtation from Richard, a traveloguer who is returning home to the same city where her new office will be. Richard is nice, and it is helpful that he knows many of the people she’ll be working with, but he makes a game out of flirting with not only her, but anything with two legs.

A casual flirtation with Drew, a concierge who works for the starline, begins to snowball into something more. With Richard’s advice, Bethany uses Kingdom Come’s traditional parting ceremony to end the relationship. But Drew is in love with her, and refuses to let her go. Although he could be fired for having an affair with a passenger, they continue their relationship in secret, aided by Richard.

Richard soon becomes entwined in their relationship. Although being with two men at the same time seems scandalous to Bethany, it is considered a rather small group to Richard, who grew up in the polyamorous society of Kingdom Come. To complicate matters, Bethany is pregnant, which only solidifies Drew’s insistence that he will never let her go.

Toward the end of the voyage, when Richard proposes marriage, Bethany spontaneously agrees even though her brain is telling her she’s being rash. When Richard insists the ceremony take place while they’re still on board The Jubilation of the Southern Cross, both Bethany and Drew are surprised, but agree since it seems so important to Richard.

As the three of them draw close to Kingdom Come, all are wondering whether they’ve already found their happily-ever-after, or whether they’ve just stepped into an adventure greater than any of them has ever imagined.

HEARTHSONG: BOOK TWO OF FROM EARTH TO KINGDOM COME

Richard has spent fifteen years travelling from star to star and writing about exotic locales and unique vacation destinations. He has earned both his reputation and his fortune. When he learns that one of his fathers has died in a stupid accident, he decides to go home, even though no one there needs him or will be impressed by anything he’s accomplished.

Since starliners only visit his homeworld a few times a year, it takes him months to get home. On board The Jubilation of the Southern Cross, Richard falls in love with Bethany and Drew, and in a whirlwind romance the three of them get married before they reach Kingdom Come.

When Richard arrives with his new husband, new wife, and a baby on the way, his newlywed status earns him a reprieve from his large, overly-attentive, match-making family. But being married and staying on just one planet is difficult for Richard. He continues to travel, spending days or weeks elsewhere on the planet, continuing to write. He makes it clear that he hates being reined in, and soon Bethany and Drew stop asking his when he’s coming home.

Although the freedom is what he wanted, it doesn’t make him happy. He’s an outsider in his own marriage, a third wheel that could easily be disposed of at any time. To complicate matters, his wife not only works with but has become close friends with Sylvie, the woman whom all his friends and family expected he would come home to sweep off her feet. Richard holds Sylvie in high esteem, but he has no romantic intentions toward her. It irks him that so many people still seem to think the two of them are destined to be together, and he can see that it bothers her too, although she pretends not to notice.

The baby arrives, and Richard struggles to figure out where his place is in the marriage. The three of them have started to see other people together, in particular a marriage of five with whom they would add up to an ideal marriage of eight. Richard left Kingdom Come so he could be in control of his own life, and after fifteen years of doing just that, he can’t just surrender and let his new wife and husband make all the decisions about their family. Then again, that might be exactly what he needs to do in order to be truly happy.

I have written several novels in this world. During the process of writing, I created a warm and vibrant civilization that approaches marriage and child-rearing as a team. Writing polyamorous romance, however, can be quite complicated. Most stories focus primarily on one character. The stories are grouped together in mini-sets such as From Earth to Kingdom Come, which is a duology. The first book focuses primarily on Bethany, and the second book focuses primarily on Richard. The first book ends in a ‘small’ marriage of three, and the second book ends in that marriage expanding to include several more spouses. The next set, Dogs, Cats, and Allergies, focuses on certain dog-loving characters in the first book, cat-loving characters in the second, and the third book brings them all together.

More details about the series as a whole can be found on my Kingdom Come page on this blog.

The Cities of Luna is a series of short stories about life on the moon in the near future. The family-friendly stories tell of everyday people, from miners to moms (sometimes those two are the same person) and everything in between. The stories show how different life is in the the fragile artificial environment with low gravity, while at the same time showing how people are people no matter where they live. While some stories are as short as a thousand words, the average story is between four and eight thousand words.

I have several stories that have never been published, and more that have already been published and are now out of print. The series began as my contribution to Liftport Group’s short-lived monthly magazine in 2013. The omnibus of the magazine is still available on Amazon. In 2014, I contracted with Distinguished Press to publish a collection of ten stories and to release single titles every full moon. The collection and one story, Moon Dragons, was published in November 2014. The next story, One Does Not Simply Walk Into Mordor, was published in December 2014. In late December, the publisher and I came to a mutual decision to stop publishing the series. Two more stories, I Love You to the Earth and Back (1,000 words) and Sheepless in Seattle (5,000 words) were published as freebies on The Cities of Luna blog.

I would be happy to re-release any of these stories with a new publisher. I have the rights to do so. I would also be happy to ignore the previously-released stories and continue with new, previously-unpublished stories. I enjoyed publishing a story for every full moon, but I am open to other schedules as well.

These stories are complete and unpublished:

Grands (5,000 words)

Moriel and Kellen share a birthday, not only with each other, but with the Founding Day of the lunar colonies. During the centennial celebrations, they and other centenarians are wined, dined, and interviewed endlessly. Conflict arises when Moriel neglects to verify whether the derriere he is pinching belongs to his own wife or Kellan’s. A high-speed chase between a powered wheel-chair and a man with a cane comes to an abrupt end when their wives intervene.

Faceplanting is Always an Option (7,000 words)

MaggieJo could have hired a stranger to help her with her rehabilitation after losing her legs, but her step-sister Becca is qualified and she needs the work. Having a physical therapist who knows your entire life’s history might seem like a good idea, but family members are supposed to love, support, and nurture, not push and demand. When her step-sister informs her that faceplanting is always an option, MaggieJo begins to regret her choice of caregiver.

Pastor Pastornack’s Sabbatical  (9,000 words)

The only way for Amara to get her congregation to understand that ‘sabbatical’ means she is really and truly unavailable is to spend her sabbatical on the Moon. Having just sent her only child off to college, she finally feels free enough to go. Although she had formulated a plan of study that includes some balderdash about ‘gaining a new perspective on the world mission’ she finds herself instead facing what it means to be, not a pastor, but the mother of an adult child who wants nothing to do with her, the widow of a man who was idolized by everyone in their community, and a woman who has no identity of her own.

Between the Moon and New York City (6,000 words)

Atuf is frustrated when finds himself stranded on Megalopolis, the huge space station in Earth orbit, when he is commuting from his home on the Moon to New York City. The transit strike may last for weeks. Fortunately, he has friends on the station who invite him to stay with them. They also have a new litter of kittens, one of whom decides that Atuf is her person. When you’re stuck between the Moon and New York City, the best thing to do is fall in love, even if it is with a cat. When Atuf realizes that his friends’ daughter’s girlfriend isn’t actually the romantic kind of girlfriend, a whole new world of possibilities opens up to him.

1492 (Rough draft only)

Fourteen-year-old Lolo has struck a bargain with ninety-two-year-old Signora DiCiancia to sell the scarves Lolo knits at a fair in Sinus Medii, which is the capital city on the equator. Lolo, however, lives in a small township outside of Shackleton at the Moon’s South Pole. When the project grows much larger and more complicated than she planned, it takes a heroic last-minute effort and the help of her family to get done on time. Unfortunately, after the heroic effort is a success, her plan for entrepreneurial greatness is foiled because the solar activity on the surface is too intense for the rover to safely leave their tiny township and make the mail run to Shackleton.

Thank you for your interest!

Tweets:

Kingdom Come

#Pit2Pub A traditional marriage of 8. Or 6. Or 11. #Polyamory makes romance on #KingdomCome delightfully complicated. #SFF #R #A #LGBT   (134)

#Pit2Pub Coming to a new planet for her dream job is all she had planned. Finding husbands (plural) took her by surprise. #SFF #R #A #LGBT   (136)

#Pit2Pub Coming home with a husband & wife & baby on the way is not enough to keep Richard’s match-making family at bay. #SFF #R #A #LGBT  (137)

The Cities of Luna

#Pit2Pub Family-centered series of #SFF shorts set on the moon. #CitiesofLuna #A Miners, Moms, Machinists & more making merry on the moon.   (139)

#Pit2Pub Building not just a civilization, but real communities on the moon. A series of #SFF shorts #CitiesofLuna #A #FamilyFriendly   (133)

#Pit2Pub Raising kids, mining rare-earth elements, shooting movies & advancing tech, all on the moon. #CitiesofLuna series of #SFF shorts #A   (140)