Happiest possible holidays! To celebrate and/or escape, a new novella from the Shieldrunner Pirates universe is now available! It’s called Six Lost Souls. You don’t have to know anything about the Shieldrunner Pirates universe to enjoy it, although those who’ve read the trilogy might appreciate a glimpse of life on Ceres before the war.

In this hardboiled science fiction novella set before the events of the Shieldrunner Pirates trilogy, Ku Nel-Aoki sets out to learn why a colony ship is still docked after refueling. The reason turns Ku’s comfortable life of crime upside down. A member of the organized crime group known as the Ceres syndicate has gotten arrested and the entire neighborhood’s police force has been replaced. Ku’s syndicate boss drops the whole mess in her lap. Now Ku has to clean it up before stationsec finds a reason to put her in a cell too, or her boss gets impatient and kills everyone involved.

You can read an excerpt, and if you like it you can acquire the ebook of Six Lost Souls at these lovely locations:

• Smashwords (EPUB, MOBI/Kindle, PDF, and LRF formats)
• Amazon (MOBI/Kindle format)
• Barnes & Noble (NOOK format)
• Kobo.com (Kobo format)

Eventually it should show up in Overdrive, so you can check it out from your local library, and various other ebook vendors. If this novella gains at least 50 reviews at a major retailer like Amazon or Smashwords, then I’ll record an audiobook of it as well. Regardless, I will record audio for this blog post at some point in the future.

Gravity of a Distant Sun, the final book in the Shieldrunner Pirates trilogy, is still scheduled to be released in February 2020, and it’s available for pre-order in your favorite bookstore now.