EXCERPT:

Suko slid down next to her, her eSMG in her hand. "Whatever we're doing, we better do it fast. Looks like they brought air support."

Sigrid didn't have to look. She could feel the low rumble of the heavy thrusters firing, growing louder. Still kilometers away, two air vehicles were moving quickly toward them. They were gunships, Thunderhawks, and they were moving fast, closing on their position. Quad cannon mounts extended from their sides, swinging into firing positions and taking aim.

They were outnumbered, and the situation was deteriorating quickly. These mercenaries might not be the enemy she was looking for, but they were still men, and they still hunted them.

"If you have a plan," Suko said, her eyes fixed on the incoming gunships, "now's the time to share it."

"Plan?" Sigrid unholstered her sidearms. "We kill them all."

SYNOPSIS: 

Alcyone is gone. The Independent stronghold on Scorpii is destroyed. Sigrid and her sisters have fled the Federation to make a new home on the remote world of Medea. 

But with a price on her head the size of a planet, and pursued across the galaxy by the Council for Trade and Finance, Sigrid knows she and her sisters are not safe. As long as there are those who would seek to control them, hunt them, they will never be safe.

Unless Sigrid can stop them first.

But to stop them, Sigrid must first find them. But how? And where? Her only clue is a mysterious coded message; one that could serve as either warning or invitation; one that will lead Sigrid to a factory world at the very edge of Federation space, and to a deadly confrontation with her most dangerous enemy yet: the machines of Bellatrix.

FROM THE PUBLISHER: A portion of this book was previously published as the short story Merchantman.

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EPISODE 1.1: "AURORA: CV-01"
A world recovering from a devastating plague…
A brutal enemy threatening invasion…
A young man seeking to escape the shadow of his father…
A ship manned by a crew of fresh academy graduates…
A top-secret experimental propulsion system…
A questionable alliance with a mysterious green-eyed woman…

What destiny has in store for the crew of the UES Aurora, is far greater than any of them could ever imagine.
And this is only the beginning.

EPISODE 1.2: "THE RINGS OF HAVEN"
A ship stranded halfway across the galaxy…
A difficult and lengthy journey home…
A home world in urgent need of their return…
And now they are running out of food…

The crew of the Aurora must now trust their new allies in order to survive. But their situation may be far more serious than they imagined, and their actions could have repercussions across the galaxy.
Their journey home may just have gotten slightly more complicated.

EPISODE 1.3: "THE LEGEND OF CORINAIR"
A captain coming into his own…
A handful of refugees stranded on board…
A possible traitor in their midst…
A voyage into the territory of the very enemy that pursues them…

Sometimes legends become realities in unexpected ways.
It seems that fate has the crew of the Aurora firmly in its clutches.
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It is difficult growing up in the shadow of heroes revered throughout the galaxy. But Khorii became a hero in her own right as she fought to save the universe from a mysterious, deadly plague that not even the healing powers of the Linyaari could stop. Now, confined with the rest of the survivors on Paloduro, it seems as if Khorii and her friends may be able to stem the tide of death and disease. However, ominous signs indicate that the epidemic is only beginning, as old enemies reemerge and a shocking family secret is revealed. With the aid of her android "brother," Khorii must foil the deadly pestilence before a covert mission to cripple the entire star system is catastrophically complete.

"I must find my own kind!"

Found as an infant drifting in space, Acorna, the Unicorn Girl, has become a young woman. She still has her tiny, translucent horn, and her "funny" feet and hands. And, she still has her miraculous ability to make plants grow and heal human sickness.

But Acorna has strange dreams of a gentle folk who mind-speak by touching horns. With her "Uncle" Calum, one of the three grizzled asteroid prospectors who rescued, protected, and raised her, she sets off to find her people. No sooner does she leave than a mysterious craft appears, piloted by the Linyaari, a gentle race with telepathic powers.

The Linyaari are roaming the galaxy, spreading the alarm about the deadly Khleev--And searching for a beloved little girl they had given up for lost, long ago...

It's a lighthearted murder mystery ... with space aliens!

Gabriel Lake is a not so hard-boiled computer guy who finds himself swept up into a web of interstellar crime when he is recruited into the Galactic Detective Agency, led by the brilliant Oren Vilkas. Can a mere Earthling track a killer across the stars before more lives are lost? Can he negotiate his way around other worlds and understand the ways of extra-terrestrial cultures? Can he even figure out how to use a bathroom designed for aliens? And can he uncover the mystery of A Town Called Potato?

INTERVIEW WITH THE AUTHOR
Q. How did you come up with the title A Town Called Potato?
A. I didn’t. It was a random thing one of my grandsons said at eight years old one day while we were playing. I often keep track of funny things my grandkids say, but this one really stuck with me. I kept thinking about that town and why it might be called Potato. I already knew I wanted to write a comedy sci-fi story, and the title just seemed to fit. The book evolved from that, and I named the protagonist after my grandson.

Q. What authors inspired you in writing A Town Called Potato?
A. Given that the story is a mash-up of comedy sci-fi and detective fiction, authors from each of those genres inspired me. In detective fiction, I love Rex Stout’s Nero Wolfe books. In fact, it isn’t too hard to see that Oren Vilkas is a homage to Nero Wolfe. And it was Rex Stout, along with Sue Grafton and Arthur Conan Doyle, who inspired me to write the book in first person. Of course when you think of comedic sci-fi, Douglas Adams is the king, and I have tried to capture a fraction of his sense of imaginative. Terry Pratchett is another comedic writer who has always inspired me with his brilliance. And I have to mention P. G. Wodehouse the OG of character-driven comedy novels.

Q. Did you find it difficult to mash up so many genres?
A. I did at first. I kept veering off just into comedy or just into detective noir. So it needed a few passes through the text to make sure I got all the boxes ticked and to get into the swing of things. I wanted Gabriel Lake to be so infused with detective fiction that his inner monologue just naturally takes on the cadences of film noir. The trick was to make that comedic and not just cheap parody. I think I found the balance by making Gabriel self-effacing in describing his fish-out-of-water adventures in space and in bringing everyone else in on the joke as well. By the end I found it easier to find Gabe’s voice, and as I got into the sequel, The Maltese Salmon, it started feeling more and more like home.

Q. Where did you get the idea for the chrono engine?
A. Every sci-fi novel that deals with interstellar travel has to deal with how to cross the mind-boggling vast expanses of space. You can devise some kind of faster-than-light travel (warp drive, hyperspace, etc.), or hypothesize traversable wormholes, or imagine a constant acceleration drive that achieves some significant fraction of light-speed, or have generation/sleeper ships. But I was shooting for comedy sci-fi. I knew I needed some preposterous tongue-in-cheek technology, something Douglas Adams might come up with. So I thought for a long time about “What Would Doug Do?” My answer with the chrono engine weaves together a wee bit of hard science (the fact that the universe used to be mush smaller) with the most outrageous hand-waving technobabble that I could come up with. I hope it makes you chuckle.
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