So the next novel I’m working on after TINSEL RAIN will be…

…GHOSTS ON AN ALIEN WIND. This was originally a short story that I did a few months ago for my Patreon, only I think it could make for a decent novel. It is absolutely not set in the Fermi Resolution universe, but it does draw from my Unfiltered SF-horror RPG setting. I’ve put a little bit below.

God knows when it’s getting published, mind you. But at least I’ll have put in the writing for proper exploitation later.

The post-flight checklist for Amalgamation vehicles is likewise a masterpiece of elegant efficiency which I’d love for some human cyberneticist to decipher. It shouldn’t work, and yet it does; and if you think for too long about how that could possibly be, your head begins to hurt. And that’s why I don’t think about it too much (which is really the best way to deal with Amalgamation tech generally) while I’m using it. The important thing was I was out of the hauler in a minute and a half, which meant I could find out what was going on.

The drumming picked up as I popped the hatch. It rains a lot at Luxor Base, but pretty regular, too. If I had been another thirty minutes it would have been pouring — and if I had somehow managed to be late for a whole hour the storm would be over. There are some parts of the planet where the weather isn’t this accommodating, but the old weather programming still works just fine in the area, which is why the corp had put its main settlement and offices here when we started developing 118-G-002. That and the weather, which is shirtsleeves all year around. When you have an entire empty planet to choose from, why not settle in the nicest parts?

I was met at the hatch by Greg, which was both not usual and unwelcome. Not personally unwelcome, you understand; Greg’s a good guy. But when your project head is waiting for an in-person talk, it’s rarely for anything minor. “Pam,” he said as soon as I cleared the hauler, “how quickly can you do a turnaround?”