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 INCIDENT ON A SMALL COLONY, a novella featuring Jani Kilian, first appeared in the December 2006 issue of Baen's Universe online magazine, with illustrations by Lee Kuruganti. (Click on the image to see a larger version) It is now available one of two ways:
A paper version can be had at Anthology Builder. Browse through the collection of works being offered, pick your stories, the artwork for the cover, and type size. $14.95 and a few weeks later, the book you designed will arrive at your door. Sometimes it's nice to have a well-made trade pb volume of stories you like.
I am also offering INCIDENT on my website and as a PDF download, both under Creative Commons license. You can download/print it out. You can pass around the link. You can't change the story. You can't republish it without my permission. If you have any questions about anything else concerning linking to or posting this story, please email me. I'm not kicking it to the curb. I like it, and I would like it to be read.
INTRODUCTION:
The events in INCIDENT ON A SMALL COLONY occur about five years after Captain Jani Kilian fled the idomeni homeworld of Shèrá and about thirteen years prior to the start of CODE OF CONDUCT. I wrote the story during a break in the writing of ENDGAME, the fifth and final installment in the series. I had always wanted to write a Jani story that was more of a straightforward adventure, with less emphasis on espionage, politics, and the sociological skirmishes between human beings and the alien idomeni. The Jani in INCIDENT is solely focused on the day-to-day challenges of surviving, of avoiding capture by the Commonwealth Service. This story is her "lost years" in microcosm--on the run, fearful of discovery, reluctant to get involved in a troubling situation yet unable to ignore a cry for help.
For anyone new to Jani’s story, the timeline (and the order of the novels) is as follows:
INCIDENT ON A SMALL COLONY (novella, 2006)
CODE OF CONDUCT (1999)
RULES OF CONFLICT (2000)
LAW OF SURVIVAL (2001)
CONTACT IMMINENT (2003)
ENDGAME (2007)
SNIPPET:
Jani dragged the cubicle door closed, then slumped against the cold metal wall. Did I just hallucinate? The girl, the woman, the men at the end of the corridor? Fellow augments had always told her that if you thought you were hallucinating, you weren't hallucinating, but she had always chalked that up to wishful thinking. If you think you might be crazy, you're not crazy. No. If you thought you might be crazy, you needed to see a medico. Except that I can't. Because if she ever walked into a hospital, they'd never let her out. Except to transfer me to the nearest Service brig. Because the Service had been looking for her for a long time.
Five years. That long since she'd worn a uniform. Snapped a salute. Five years since she'd answered to the name she'd been born with. Jani Moragh Kilian. Born in the city of Ville Acadie, Acadia Colony, twenty-nine Common years before she had taken to seeing girls who weren't there and hiding in station bathrooms to assess her sanity.
 INCIDENT ON A SMALL COLONY - web page (176 KB)
INCIDENT ON A SMALL COLONY - PDF (249 KB)
A lighter fantasy short story, "8 rms, full bsmt", will be appearing in an antho entitled MISSPELLED, which will be edited by Julie Czerneda. It will be published by DAW, with release scheduled for early 2008.
SNIPPET:
"One."
"Damn it, Jamie Sheridan, if we live through this--"
"Two."
"--"I'll bloody kill you myself!"
"Three!" Jamie plunged forward into the dark.
"Did you hear me?" I scrambled to my feet and bolted after him, dodging around melted mangles and through a do-it-yourself passageway that had once been part of a wall.
"You can kill me later." Jamie slid to a stop behind the smoking husk of a television cabinet. "Having you kill me would be infinitely preferable to anything else that could happen, believe me."
An essay of mine entitled "Confessions of a Late Bloomer" will be appearing in How I Got Published--Famous Authors Tell You How in Their Own Words, a collection of how-to/how-I-did-it essays by published writers. The book will be edited by Duane Lindsay, and is scheduled to be published by F&W Publications, the Writers Market folks, in October/November 2007.
SNIPPET:
I felt the first vague rumblings in college. I started writing the story of a young woman rebelling against a repressive regime, and had completed about two handwritten pages when my roommate asked me what I was doing.
"Writing a book."
"Oh. How many pages have you written?"
"Two."
She laughed in a lightly mocking sort of way, and I...stopped. I didn't have the wit to reply that every book ever written started on page one. I just stopped.
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