Timeless Keeper Book 3 Finally Gets a Name

Happy Holidays! We bid on a new house in Eureka that we're really excited about. Lots of space, good location, old, but decent shape. If all goes well, we'll be moving in around the new year. Fingers crossed! We also did a drive-by of our old house, which sold in November. It's already a different color. Nice, but weird!!! 😄

While writing this, I'm staying in an AirBnB just down the beach from Santa Monica Pier, where the first few chapters of Dragon Assassin are set. It's surreal walking around and placing where each imaginary event occurred. Fun!

2024 has been a lot of work, but good. We sold our house of 29 years, moved to Eureka, and are on-track to close the house of our dreams / our forever home on Jan 2. My two youngest kids spread their downy wings and moved into their own apartment. I published 2 books (Project Xerxes, Enigma), worked on an awesome book trailer with my brother (all to amazing reception), and made significant progress on Timeless Keeper Saga Book 3. And the unrelated startup I co-founded 3 years ago is finally starting to make revenue. Woohoo!

2025 promises to be even bigger. In addition to publishing Timeless Keeper Saga Book 3, I plan to write and publish the second book of the Lost Colonies. This will also be the year that, by hook or by crook, The Z-Tech Chronicles Books 5 and 6 (Angels Adrift and Angels Strike) finally hit the shelves, bringing the series to an epic close.

Oh, back to year end, every year I forget that all of my Water Dragon Publishing e-books go on sale via Smashwords for the Holiday season. Get 'em 50-75% off through Jan 1, conveniently listed on my Smashwords author page.

Lastly, Timeless Keeper Saga Book 3 finally has a title! Read on for more, and for an exclusive sneak preview.

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• Timeless Keeper Saga Book 3 Gets a Name — Plus a sneak preview
• Book Sales and Events
• Currently Reading

Timeless Keeper Saga Book 3 Gets a Name

Plus an exclusive sneak preview

Never have I reached the halfway point of a manuscript and still not had a title. Timeless Keeper Saga Book 3 is at 65k words (yep, it's going to be a big one). Most of the story so far occurs on Mars Colony. I thought about naming it that, but it would probably conflict with a hundred other books that cover the subject better than this one.

In this story, Mars Colony is divided into upper and lower sections. The upper section, Kelper Station, is on the surface of the planet. It's sparsely populated and contains only those functions that require sunlight or are best suited for outdoors. The colonists spend most of their time in the lower part, however, situated deep in ancient, protective lava tubes. They appropriately named it Peleos, after Pele, the Hawaiian goddess of volcanoes, power, passion, jealousy, and capriciousness.

And so, since each book has been named after the primary location, Peleos is now the working title! This also enables me to start imagining book covers, although I'll probably save that exercise until after the first draft.

Right, on to the good part. The following excerpt is Seg's first introduction to the book's namesake, Peleos, and to the denizens of Mars Colony, who aren't as welcoming as he'd expected. It's also one of my favorite scenes thus far. (Please forgive the rough edges; it's still a first draft.) Hope you enjoy!

Excerpt from Chapter 4: Security

The pressurized tube-corridor ran inside a carved runnel in the black rock. The tunnel itself stretched farther across than Seg believed tunnels could stretch, natural or otherwise. Its vastness felt less like a cavern than a world within a world.

In the distance, far below, a sea of lights gleamed off the ribbed lava rock.

Peleos.

That, Seg had learned from the museum in New Denver, was the heart of Mars Colony. Shielded from the elements and unfiltered sun, the subterranean city stretched for hundreds of meters, dots of rounded light like a field of glowing white mushrooms, connected by a spiderweb of luminescent tubes.

He and Fi walked in silence, far behind the others, and alone because Chuck hadn’t followed. Seg yearned to talk with her about Chuck, if only to offer solace, but she seemed disinclined to speak, lost in her own thoughts, which he respected. Experience had taught him that she would open up when she was ready.

“You’re too forgiving,” Fi said in the middle of the dark tunnel.

“And you’re too hard on yourself. Um, what are we talking about?”

“Us. Me. The mired cesspool of my past. You have every right to ask.”

“I know.”

She rounded on him, stumbling him to a halt.

“Then why don’t you?”

Seg scratched his chin, overgrown with stubble from traveling a hundred million miles in a spaceship with no razor. “In your place, the last thing I’d want is to constantly have to explain my past mistakes. It would be one thing if it seemed you hadn’t learned from them, but your conversation with Chuck shows you have. I don’t see any reason to beat a dead hog.”

Fi smirked. “The original saying is ‘to beat a dead horse.’”

“Ugh! Why would you do that?”

“It’s… never mind. Anyway, I get your point, but I can’t imagine that’s satisfying for you.”

“I’ll let you know when I’m not satisfied. Have I ever struck you as shy?”

Fi laughed. “No, Grand Chancellor, you haven’t.”

“Too right.” Seg touched her lightly on the nose. “Also, one more Grand Chancellor out of you and I’ll start calling you Miss Fi again. Clear?”

“Sorry, Your Excellency.”

“Oh, now you’re just asking for it.”

“Maybe I am.”

She gave a salacious wink that set his heart racing, then cruelly sashayed away. Seg hurried to catch up. It was good to see another glimpse of the old Fi peek out through the gloom. He only hoped it would last.

The spectacle at the bottom of the ramp squashed whatever happiness he’d scavenged from Fi’s waggling rear. His entire group stood with their hands behind their heads, including his Chief Security Officer, while Martian officials patted them down. Three stern-looking brutes watched from the sides holding batons. Batons! As if the Aeczan couldn’t turn their mighty weapons to water with a single thought. It was the most overt and insulting display yet, and the bar had already been face-punchingly high.

To their credit, the Luraelans weathered the stormy treatment as if it were a breezy summer’s day. Even the Phezath, whom Seg expected to be at least a little incensed, didn’t appear inconvenienced in the slightest. Uma willingly produced three blades from slots in her armor, along with two small items Seg assumed were death rays or some such. The security personnel placed everything neatly on the ground next to an assortment of other items, none of which Seg could identify, but he would have bet Cook’s car they weren’t weapons.

Unlike the Luraelans, Cook himself appeared ready to chew steel. Veins pulsed on a forehead redder than Martian soil. The look he shot Seg promised an epic tongue lashing to the person responsible, but he had evidently decided this was not the place to argue.

Seg wished he possessed his security chief’s restraint. He stomped forward, intent on putting an end to this madness, but a warning glance from Fi stoppered his tirade before it could erupt. She raised her hands behind her head, like the others, and patiently waited to be frisked.

“Weapons?”

“Yes.”

The man paused, crouched with his hands on either side of Fi’s thigh. He looked up expectedly, but she remained quiet.

“Where?” he said eventually.

“Right outer calf, above my ankle.”

He lifted the pant leg of her flight suit. Strapped to her pale skin was a thick metal rod the length of Seg’s hand. He slipped it out and hefted it appreciatively. “Telescoping baton. I didn’t figure you for a stick girl. Anything else?”

“Yes.”

When she remained quiet again, he pinched the bridge of his nose.

“Look, Fi, I’m just doing my job. Don’t make this any more awkward than it already is.”

“Your job, as I recall, was waste reclamation systems. You were top of your class in Ecological Recycling and Closed System Engineering. I know because I hand-picked you from a list of hundreds of eager candidates.”

The man stood, putting them at eye level, even though Fi topped him by a few centimeters. His wispy mustache twitched in the beginnings of a smile at odds with his confused brow.

“You did? I always assumed it was a lottery or something.”

“Mars Program was far too important to leave to chance. We needed the best. The lives of your fellow colonists depended on it, so I accepted no less.” She met the eyes of each ad-hoc security personnel in turn. “All of you were selected because you are the best in your respective fields. Because you are leaders and independent thinkers who can together overcome any challenge the Red Planet presents. Because your skills are critical to the continued survival of Mars Colony.” Fi returned her lapis gaze to her frisker. “Remember that the next time someone attempts to assign you to unnecessary guard duty.”

A woman with a broad torso and arms as thick as Seg’s shouldered the abashed frisker out of the way.

“Frivolous, huh?” She pointed at the small arsenal arrayed on the floor. “Seems like Kiezik had your number, Kaitet.” She spat the last word as someone in Holtondome would say hog-brain. “Now where’s your other weapon? I’d hate to strip-search you, but don’t think I won’t.”

She patted Fi’s arms with ham-fisted thwumps that weren’t even third-cousins to gentle, then moved down her side and to her legs. Fi endured the abuse without so much as a grunt.

“Where is it?” the woman said, working her way back up. “Where!”

“Right there.”

The woman stopped on her hips. She patted desperately around, slapping flesh through cloth. “I don’t feel anything.”

“Of course you do. You’ve been punching it for nearly a minute.”

“Stop playing games! Where is it? Show me!”

The woman’s next pat-slap never connected. Fi fluidly tangled her wrist into a lock that bent the woman upright. The abuser heaved a pained moan, then louder when Fi cranked her arm to draw her inexorably closer. Fi loomed over her like a cobalt mountain, her green-tinged hair wisping in the artificial air.

“You’re looking at her. I am the weapon, deadlier than The Fall, more destructive than a super nova, likelier to end one civilization than to save another. I am the original Pale Horseman, the Valkyrie of legend, as old as the dawn of man. Armies rise or fall at my whim. I am the unchained changer of fates, a hurricane of chaos and possibility.

“And you’ve found me.” Fi released the stunned woman so suddenly that she nearly fell over. “What will you do now? Lay me on the floor with the knives and batons and other devices whose functions you can’t even guess? Will you confiscate me? Lock me in a crate?”

The burly woman gulped. “No.”

“Then I’m glad to see your dual Doctorates in Chemical Engineering and Hydroponics—those were your fields of study, as I recall—aren’t just slips of paper between glass, and that the critical thinking skills you learned are at last being put to use.”

Fi slowly lowered her arms. No one tried to stop her. The rest of the entourage did likewise, Cook most aggressively, his glare promising one of his infamous tongue lashings to the rag-tag security team. Seg didn’t envy them. Nor did anyone prevent Uma from replacing her weapons in the hidden slots of her armor. Fi’s Pale Horseman speech must have shaken the stupid out of them, which, lucky for them, robbed Seg of the pleasure of doing it with his bare hands.

“Grand Chancellor,” the waste reclamation specialist said with the anemic enthusiasm of someone awaiting a root canal, “welcome to Peleos.”

Book Sales and Events

• December — Smashwords sale. 50-75% off all my Water Dragon Publishing digital titles. Everything is 50% off except Zima: Origins, which is 75%. Ho ho ho. 🛷

Currently Reading

In addition to the title below, I'm reading a highly-evolved draft of a book I've read several times before from an author friend of mine. It's amazing how dramatically a story can change from the first to final draft. Looking forward to seeing this one on the shelves.

Harrow the Ninth (audiobook)

Still working through this. Slow going only because I'm saving it for long car rides, which this holiday season has provided aplenty. Already knowing what's going to happen has made this book much more enjoyable, although for a first-time read, I stick by my original review. I continue to be wowed by Moira Quirk's performance. Her voices and accents are amazing.

Read original book review

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