Maya Darjani's Blog

Please to announce I’m a FINALIST in the Indie ink Awards!!!!

I have a podcast!

check out my audio narration of Ancient as the Stars on your favorite podcast app!

– Check out this great 5 star review of The Star-Crossed Empire by JAMReads!

– Loyalty to the Max is also on Jamedi’s 2025 list of anticipated reads!

– (ICMYI: last month: A five star review of The Star-Crossed Empire by SFF Insiders, and LTTM being on their 2025 list!) 

– I got to announce last month that Ancient as the Stars had hit over 200 lifetime sales. Well, this month, The Star-Crossed Empire hit 100! Not bad!

Note: Ever since I started my newsletter, I’ve been ignoring my blog. I just sent out my December newsletter and decided to pull the info into a post!

 You can visit the Indie Story Geek website and  log in to vote for Ancient as the Stars in the  following categories:
–  Best book cover and cover artist
– Best use of tropes
– Wittiest character
-LGBTQ+ representation
– Mental Health representaton
– Neurodivergent representation

96

Ancient as the Stars has reached 200 books sold in less than 6 months!

SALES!

The Star-Crossed Empire is currently on sale for $1.99 on Smashwords!

The r/fantasy mega sale is also coming on December 28th. Both Ancient as the Stars and the Star-Crossed Empire will be on sale on Amazon (and perhaps elsewhere) for 99 cents!

SPSFC 4 Update! I received a wonderful review from Ariana Wheldon in the initial round of the Self-Published Science Fiction Contest. Onward and Upward!A look around the Maya Verse:
– Ancient as the Stars is one of 12 participants in the Many Realms SFF competition/reading club! It will be featured more extensively in February
– Want handmade merch? Signed books? My fun attempt at painted edges? Check out my ko-fi shop. 
– The Star-Crossed Empire has a new review on SFF Insiders
– SFF Insiders has also put Loyalty to the Max, the sequel to Ancient as the Stars, on its 2025 Most Anticipated List
-The Star-Crossed Empire was #1 in science fiction on Campfire Writing and is now a staff pick! Stay tuned for my interview on the site, which will publish in January
-I got to take 1.5 hours away from babies and have fun on the Secret Scribes and Friends livestream. Check it out here!

Keep up with me on Instagram! I don’t always remember to share everything going on every month, but my insta is regularly updated with all happenings! Also, my insta feed is very very pretty and more people should appreciate it.

Well, hello lovelies! Let me get one thing out of the way: I still love traditional publishing (even if it doesn’t love me back). I truly hope to get The Shining Palais and The Counterclock Spy traditionally published, because I think they both fit that market better.

But self-publishing has been a long time coming, and my Broken Union series, especially, has always been something I’d plan to publish myself. It fits better here in the indie world.

So I finally did it. I’m getting the book out there in June 2024.

(Important note: For those of you subscribed to my blog and not to my newsletter, I do provide exclusive content to my mailing list. For example, I’m also publishing Star-Crossed Empire, from the Chronicles of the Whorl series, and I’ve already done a cover reveal. My public cover reveal for SCE will likely be in early July. Please go here to subscribe!)

Here’s the blurb, with links below! Preorders for the ebook (at this moment, Amazon/Kindle Unlimited) are open. There will also be a paperback (through Amazon and retailers such as B&N), and a special edition hardcover (through retailers such as B&N).

For fans of Lower Decks, the Expanse, and Firefly: a found family time travel adventure with humor, snark, and lots of heart.

One kickass immortal sailship captain.

Captain Karenna Yilmaz of the Earth Union Fleet has it all. Adoring husband? Check. The enduring loyalty of her crew? Check. Transformation into a beautiful ageless immortal? Check. Check. Check. But when a dimensional rift brings her low-down, dust-sniffing, no-good younger self hurtling into the present, Karenna’s carefully-constructed life wavers. 

One snarky dust-addicted loser.

Flight Officer Ren Yilmaz is pretty sick of the hand she’s been dealt. Her supervisor is an idiot. Her ex-husband is vindictive and has ruined her career. And now, here’s her perfect future self, who everyone fawns over, while Ren is still ignored and alone.

They’re the same person, 60 years apart 

Both their ships are stranded: one in space, one in time. Karenna needs to get her crew home safe and sound. And Ren has to get back to her reality and out of Karenna’s shadow. Working together would mean literally facing their past–including old traumas and transgressions best kept hidden. But if they don’t, they’ll be stuck with each other until the end of time.Support Ancient As The Stars!

Here’s what you can do to show interest in this space opera adventure full of humor, snark, and lots of heart

Add Ancient as the Stars on Goodreads
Preorder Ancient as the Stars on Amazon
Promote and follow Maya on: TikTok Instagram Twitter

I will let you know when ARCs are open! Thank you for reading!

This is less a “story about revpit” and more a “here’s an update on the last 12 months”

Previous posts about my writing journey:

The Evolution of Ancient History

I’m an AMM mentee!

Let me flash back to one year ago. It’s September 2022. I am beginning to query my third manuscript, The Shining Palais, which is my AMM manuscript. I’d been worried about mixing a very traditional spy story with science fiction. A lot of agents who do SF don’t want that type of thriller, and vice versa. But I had such a blast writing the spy stuff, and despaired at how hard it is to publish adult SF. So you know what? It was time to–

So. I wrote a contemporary spy story.

I can’t quite explain how I got the idea for the structure of Counterclock Spy. I had had scenes from it in my head for months by that point, but some scenes would only work if the reader understood what was going on, but before the character knew, etc etc. Eventually I decided I wanted to write it in reverse chronology. Not a new idea, but I had forgotten it was a thing. (I’ve… Never seen Memento.)

(Read about Counterclock Spy here)

What’s weird about that is I had, for the first time, a loose outline going in. Usually I have a vision for the beginning of a story but have no idea how it’s going to end. This time, I of course already had the vision of the beginning (chronology -wise), but I also knew the end! Because of this, I could write pacey, and churn out chapters fast. (I faltered, however, in the murky middle).

Anyway, I wrote the first chapter and then posted in the AMM Round 9 Slack that I was looking for a beta just to review the first chapter. Since the story is backwards, I wanted to make sure the reader wasn’t totally lost, but still intrigued. My new personal hero, Katie, volunteered. I sent her the first chapter.

She wrote: do you have any more???

As any fanfic writer knows, when a reader downs your first chapter and begs for more–you’re chasing that high forever. I never experienced that with original writing because of my methodological pantser personality. I usually need to spend time with my manuscript, pruning and gardening and editing as I go, so a read-along CP doesn’t usually work.

But this time, I knew the basic outline of the story. So I wrote chapter 2, and sent it to her the very next day. And so on and so forth.

I was going so fast I legitimately thought I’d finish the draft in 30 days.

But like in any good story, life didn’t quite work out as planned. Just as I hit that murky middle, I unexpectedly started to home school my 5 year old. (It’s a long story, and there was legitimately no notice). Okayyy. Now I have to educate a kindergartner. Cool, cool.

Then my nanny quit (okay nanny sounds so privileged but the now-6-year-old has a lot of special needs and having an extra adult on the scene allows me to deal with everything else on my plate, including my other children)

Then I found out I was pregnant. (Surprise!!)

Then I got the worst flu of my life. (Yes it was the flu, not COVID, yes I had the flu shot, yes I was much sicker with it than when I had COVID but part of the reason I was sicker is because my body never recovered from COVID etc etc).

Except I couldn’t drink because I WAS PREGNANT

Amazingly enough, it still took only about 90 days to finish the manuscript, with the best CP ever cheering me on the entire way.

By the time February 2023 rolled around, I had a few writing things going on. I had decided I was going to self publish my very first manuscript (Ancient History, which is still going through a few name changes), which meant learning about the business, and starting to write book 2 in the series. And I was getting Counterclock Spy ready for RevPit. I have an amazing AMM mentor so I would never submit an SF manuscript to another contest, but contemporary thriller ain’t exactly her thing.

Then I got COVID. Again. Yay.

While lying in bed I got an awesome email–a R&R on Shining Palais. Cue panic, but like, a happy panic.

That week, my eldest child spilled water on my Chromebook. I would have to do the entire r&r on my phone.

Somehow, as usual, I pulled it off.

Fast forward. It was April, day of Revpit results. Announcement would be at 12pm Eastern. At 11:30 Eastern… I finally finished the r&r for my other manuscript. I was seriously going to send it off –but decided to wait 30 minutes for RevPit results, in case that changed anything.

Of course, I didn’t think I would get in.

But as these things happen, I did get in. And got paired with the best editor ever, Miranda. (Seriously. I do well with no nonsense people, and the universe somehow knows that, pairing me with Melissa for AMM and Miranda for RevPit.)

Okayyy.

Revpit has an agent showcase. It was 8 weeks away.

I was due with my fourth child in 11 weeks.

Now, the thing about the RevPit showcase is that you don’t need to have the revision completed. So that deadline isn’t a hard deadline. In fact, a lot of my fellow RevPit winners didn’t have their edit letters yet. (Of course, I had mine immediately. It’s Miranda, after all).

But I had a deadline of my own. Baby due, and I was holding off on sending the r&r of the other ms until I could get this ms sent off too.

I was still stuck with only a phone and Google docs for revising.

Then our second nanny quit. (It’s not us, I swear! Just bad timing!)

However, though it took a few weeks, I got the first version of the revision done.

And then got hit with another edit letter [image error] Major revisions this time around.

I legitimately was about to name the baby Archer but changed my mind at the last minute

It was probably only two weeks until showcase? Okay, fine, I’ll have the showcase materials ready at least! Maybe 4 weeks till baby time. Could I pull it off yet again?

(reader, I could not)

June 2023. My husband’s grandmother passes. A few days later, my town gets hit with 100mph straight wind–with only 30 minutes notice at midnight. Needless to say it was like Mad Max the next day.

No one had power. Eventually my in laws got power back and we moved in with them. At 10pm one night, days later, we got the notice our power was back. I went into labor 1 hour after that.

I was joking, but kinda not joking, that I would be doing my revision in labor.

(okay that sounds really bad but I wanted to do it! Hyperfocus! It’s a blessing and a curse!)

I did, in fact, open up the doc and was about to write, but then shit got real and I wasn’t even in a shape to talk.

But would you know it? That night, holding my newborn, I started to revise again.

The End (for now)

I like to make fake screenshots

(ooh, did you know WordPress has a “Stories” feature?!?)

I call this little ditty “January 2022”

I wrote this post a few days after announcements, but waited a while to actually publish it, because everything? About what we’re doing with this mentorship? Was up in the air? Because you see, it’s a long story…

I don’t think normally I would make a “How I Got My Mentor” post because for most people, it’s a pretty straightfoward event, unlike getting an agent…except this time, it totally isn’t straightforward, and it helps reinforce that nothing is a straight line, and you never know when your moment will come.

So I actually won a caption contest with that exact quote when I was 13 and now I feel like I’ve been plagiarized. (Because of course, other people can’t come up with the same joke that a 13 year old can, right?)

Definitions for non-writers:

AMM: Author-Mentor Match, a program that matches agented and/or published authors with baby writers like mePitch Wars and RevPit: other programs. If you’re an avid reader of new books, you may have heard of Pitch Wars because it’s like the American Idol of publishingQuerying: Yeeting the first pages of your book to agents with a pitch letter aka the query trenches aka lighting your soul on fire and weeping as the rejections roll inFulls and Partials: agent or mentor requests for the full manuscript or the first 50 pages, respectively

Okay, chickadees. Let me take you back to February 2020. Pre-pandemic, pre-the world on fire—oh no, wait, it had already been on fire for awhile, let me update–okay, so pre-the world even more on fire than it had been, okay?

I had just finished writing a manuscript called Kara and Karenna. It was crap. Kinda. It had a good premise, but I had never actually finished writing a book before and I knew Writing Is Rewriting and Editing Is Good and Necessary but…like…how the heck am I supposed to revise the book when this is the best I can do?

(Note: I’m still like that, in the sense that most of my major revision happens while writing the book, and the post-draft editing I do is very similar to the post-draft editing I did on Kara and Karenna. )

(Except now that I’m a mentee, I’m probably going to learn A Lot of Shit on How to Revise When You Think Your Draft is Done but It’s Not Done, Actually… and I need to stop with the weird caps.)

Oh crap. This post is already getting too long. Can you imagine what an Agent post would be for me? Anyway, I wrote it really fast, between November and December 2019, edited in January 2020, and then was all NOW WHAT and that’s when I joined twitter, participated in RevPit’s mini 10-queries event, joined a Slack group hosted by a RevPit editor which was my first taste of writing community, and then applied to AMM in February.

Reader, I did not get in. Duh.

Buuut, I actually got a full request! And then feedback! So that was nice.

Through a series of unfortunate events, I started querying that book before it was ready, but I got AMM feedback, RevPit feedback (I had a full request from them too), and finally, feedback from a full and from a partial (it still amazes me I got requests on this flaming pile of dung but again…premise was good?), and all the feedback combined with an accelerated course on How to Write (not an actual course, I just mean I found writing friends and that’s when I learned everything), convinced me I needed to rewrite the entire thing, and that’s how I rewrote it and it became A Matter Of Ancient History.

Which is still not my best work, really, but I’m a lot more proud of it.

During that time, I also wrote and polished my second ms, The Star-Crossed Empire, which has a very different writing style and voice and premise, but was heavily influenced by understanding what’s marketable in the book world today (I didn’t write it to be marketable, but it did unconsciously influence my writing choices).

I submitted Star-Crossed Empire to AMM the next year, in January 2021.

I…I had a great experience. I got a full request before the submission period was over, and it turns out I had been requested by two of the four mentors. And a third mentor didn’t request but really enjoyed and liked it, but it just had themes a bit too close to her own work, and she was unsure she could help me with my dual timelines. But I got feedback from all three mentors, and it blew my mind. One of them actually read it all the way through. The other two — one of the requests and obviously the one who didn’t request–only had the first 50 pages but were very complimentary.

The mentor who didn’t request was Melissa Work, and I figured I’d never really cross her path again, and if I ever did, I would NOT tell her that I printed off something she wrote in my feedback and put it on my corkboard because that’s really embarrassing and weird, okay? But I did print it out, and I refer back to it often, whenever I feel down in the query trenches (which is…a lot of times), and it is really really important to me.

You have no idea how much I stare at this it’s kinda embarrassing

As I was querying Star-Crossed Empire, I wrote my third manuscript, which AGAIN is in a different style and voice, called Shining Palais. In September 2021, I subbed Shining Palais to Pitch Wars and got two requests but ultimately no mentorship.

AMM was coming up for 2022.

I was pretty sure I wasn’t going to apply.

You see, I love the idea of mentorships, but it’s stressful to apply. Even though I tell myself I really don’t care, and that actually what I care about are the requests. (And let me reiterate that not getting a request isn’t a judgment on your writing. But, no matter how many times people tell me that and I tell other people that, it’s hard for me to internalize.)

Anyway, the mentorship programs are hard. If you don’t get a request, it’s easy to feel really down in the dumps about your work. (But at least you can count yourself out at a certain point and then move on) If you do get a request..then you spend weeks haunting the twitter teaser feed for any scrap of information or hope and you get really obsessive and…okay that’s just me.

Tessa from Shining Palais knows what’s up

Anyway, I never mourn when I don’t get a mentorship, but it still makes it not worth alllll the nervous energy of the weeks before. I had had a good Pitch Wars. I had slowly started querying Shining Palais already and didn’t want to hold off on actively querying. And…I wasn’t getting the request rate in my preliminary querying for Shining Palais that I had been getting for Star-Crossed Empire, and I didn’t think my heart could handle not getting a request in AMM. So, I was out for this round.

Until a writing friend discovered that I had hardly queried my very first manuscript (A Matter of Ancient History) and pretty much yelled at me being like, “WHY’D YOU GIVE UP ON THAT MS?!? YOU SHOULD QUERY IT MORE.”

Which gave me the idea of reentering A Matter of Ancient History into AMM. Bonus, I wasn’t very emotionally tied to it any more so although it would hurt a bit to not get any requests, it wouldn’t hurt that much.

Reader, I did not get any requests.

(I actually tweeted at one of the mentors I had subbed to, Melissa, who was the one who gave me such kind feedback the year before, being all like, “Are you going to tell us when you start requesting?” and she was like, “nope. not gonna tell.” And then I was all embarrassed and slunk away.)

Ren from Ancient History falls on her face a lot. Kinda like me.

Again, like I said, the good news about not getting requests is that you can move on. And it was much easier to move on this year. I stopped paying attention to AMM altogether.

The mentee list was due to come out on or around February 4th.

I got an email February 2nd.

It was an AMM full request. What the shit.

Not only that, but the email was like…soo….the mentor was also interested in your other work so feel free to send anything else over like WIPs or other completed projects, if you want, if that’s not weird or anything, ok? And I was like, “Okay…?”

(I hope it’s clear I’m paraphrasing all these communications, right?)

So for the first time in weeks I wade into the teaser hashtag and lo and behold, Melissa posts something cryptic about someone in the mentor Slack keeping it chaotic up until the last minute which obviously means it was her.

This (from Star-Crossed Empire) is my favorite scene ever in the history of my writing, not that it’s written all that well but I’d want to see it on screen

Which made sense, when I thought about it, but I also wasn’t too stressed about it because it was 2 days till announcements and obviously, she wasn’t going to pick me hahahahaha that would be ridiculous.

Reader, I…I got into AMM. She picked me. She likes my writing and concepts overall, and couldn’t stop thinking about it and decided she wanted to mentor me.

The announcement post has it that we’ll be working on Ancient History together, but as I originally drafted this, we actually didn’t know which manuscript? Melissa needed to take some time to…you know…read my manuscripts. Since she requested two days before announcements.

Now I’m pleased to announce we’ll be working on The Shining Palais, my science fantasy espionage story about a sleeper agent who loves her unwitting kids and ex and will do anything to protect them, except her next mission is to betray them, basically a science fiction “The Americans” or Red Sparrow, or as I tag it, DISASTER BI SPY IN SPAAAAACE.

(Do you see how I wrote that like it was a Publisher’s Weekly deal announcement? Run-on sentence and all?)

The three rules of espionage (which I totally made up)

It still blows my mind, and I stare at the welcome email a lot. I got effectively picked off a partial. Because nothing in publishing is linear, or makes sense, and you just need to go along for the ride.

It’s a good lesson for those of us in the trenches. Nothing is linear. Your backlist can work for you. It just takes one yes. Someone can believe in you even when you’re not everyone’s cup of tea. Shoot your shot.

You are so close. Don’t give up.

Edit: My fellow R9 mentees have been writing and filming their own “I got into AMM” posts! Please check them out:

Gates Palissery

https://giwritesbooks.wordpress.com/2022/02/19/amm-round-9-im-in/

Aiden Siobhan

https://aidensiobhan.com/blog-1

Emily Rae

https://youtu.be/3p8eRmjiy7w

Lanchi Le

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mcNzBgX3HvE

E.M. Anderson

https://andersonbooks.wordpress.com/2022/02/22/this-is-where-i-thrash-talk-about-author-mentor-match/

Elle Taylor

https://elletaylorwriter.wordpress.com/2022/03/10/the-start-of-my-author-mentor-match-journey/

I guess it’s time for an FAQ!

So you write? What do you write?

Um..mostly science fiction/fantasy. Although I plan to branch out into romance and thriller.

Isn’t that for kids? Isn’t that hacky stuff that anyone can churn out? Is it mostly all about white dudes flying around with lasers and/or swords?

No. And no, and no. Actually, if you ever need book recommendations for science fiction or fantasy that’s diverse, dense, written at a high level, literary, upmarket/book club, or anything like that–let me know.

Similarly, if you want SFF that reads like awesome fanfic and has humor and wit, I can give you that too. And, the two aren’t mutually exclusive.

Also, the “hacky” stuff is awesome too. C’mon y’all, we’re in a pandemic. Let people enjoy things.

How many books have you written? How many pages?

3 full manuscripts. We don’t count by page numbers, but the word count is, respectively, 110k, 117K, and 113K.

That’s long.

I know. Well within range for SFF, but yes, it’s exhausting to write that much. I’m looking forward to my 80K upmarket contemporary thriller.

So, are you getting published?

Hah.

What does that mean?

Most major publishers won’t take on unagented writers. You need an agent, first.

So, time to get an agent?

Yeah…um, I’ve been working on that. Hence, winning a mentorship contest.

Why do you not have one yet?

Demand vs supply. Publishing is downsizing, so there are fewer editors to acquire work, which means there are fewer people for agents to submit to, which means they take on fewer clients.

Ooor, you’re not good enough.

I may or may not be good enough. That’s really the only part of this process I can control. But plenty of brilliant books and writers never get published. Not that I’m brilliant. But I’m decent.

(side note: have you ever watched The Movies that Made Us? You know how Forrest Gump or Dirty Dancing or Home Alone almost never got made? Yeah. It’s like that).

Do you think you’ll get published some day?

Yes. Some day. I can only control what I can control, though.

If you get an agent, you have it made, right?

Oh. Hah. No. You might still not be able to sell the book. Your agent might decide to leave agenting and become a blacksmith. (True story) Or they might drop you as a client out of the blue. Or you might decide to leave them.

That’s rough

Yeah. And trust me, most authors/writers have stories like that.

So, what’s the secret to success?

Perserverence.

Are you going to be a bestseller?

No. Never. I know bestselling writers, actually, via social-media, but that’s not my market.

Will people know your name, at least?

No.

Um, why do you do this again?

It’s a compulsion. Roll with it.

My cousin published a book on Amazon.

Good for them!

Why don’t you just publish it on Amazon?

I’m an establishment/traditional publishing kinda gal. Self-pub isn’t for me, and I would never be able to attract that kind of readership because I’m not a marketing/selling type person.

(“Just self-publish” is not as easy as you think it is, if you actually want to be successful)

Yeah. They’re all hacks and losers.

Please don’t insult my indie/self-pub brethren. That won’t fly here.

(If you need indie book recs, ask me)

So, do you sit by a roaring fire surrounded by verdant greens, writing to classical music while people bring you snacks?

I’m a stay at home mother with a house to keep. I write on my phone in the car line, while doing dishes, in the middle of the night when I wake up with dialogue stuck in my head, and literally in the shower...

Women (and men, yes yes I’ll be equal opportunity, and everyone in between and outside the gender binary and so on and so forth) since time immemorial have been multitasking and getting it done because that’s what’s expected of us.

So you’re not neglecting your kids?

No. Although “Bluey” is an excellent babysitter. Also, screw you.

No, seriously, how do you have time? That plus the 100+ books you read a year?

It’s called hyperfocus. It’s a gift and a curse.

I found a typo/misspelling. You call yourself a writer?

….

I’m not going to answer that one.

What should I never ask you when I see you in person?

“How’s that writing thing going?” Actually, if you see me, please never talk to me about writing, unless it’s your writing, not mine. I would like to Not Be Perceived, please.

But…but you want to get published…

I would like to NOT BE PERCEIVED, OKAY?

All right. Sheesh. What can I ask you?

if you’re a fellow querying writer, I would love to commiserate with you. And if you’re a few steps behind me and need advice or information, I’ll be happy to help. If you’re a reader, I’d love to scream about books with you. If you’re a few steps ahead of me, you get it and I don’t need to explain my desire to yeet myself into the sun most of the time when publishing comes up as a topic

It’s the final week! I got the awesome services of Kota Rayne. They had really nice things to say about my story, especially the two things I know are my strengths: the dialogue and the incremental lead-up to the ending. But they wanted to see a little more in terms of motivations: why is Karenna doing what she’s doing? What about Tim? And a little more to show the love they have/had for each other.

I’m not entirely sure I’ve succeeded in all of it, yet. Usually significant feedback takes me a bit longer to digest, so this idea of throwing in an edit within a week is hard. For example, there were details that Kota suggested were taking them out of the story, and some other ones better served in dialogue. The lazy ass I am, I just moved the paragraphs around rather than recast them into dialogue. Stuff like that. So, I’m not quite going to call this a final draft. Maybe next week, when I post my final reflections.

Regardless, I’m thrilled I was able to add more characterization and goal/motivation/conflict and I hope to be able to deepen it more next week!

The stardust in our souls

Long ago, Tim’s mother told him that all humans were made of stardust. And Tim would look in all his nooks and crannies, checking belly lint and earwax and boogers, trying to find evidence of sun particles, but all he could find were the lumpy, stinky, bulbous leavings of Earth-bound bodies. And promptly put it out of his mind.

Little did he know that stardust was powerful enough to turn a man immortal. Or that it could bring a civilization to its knees.

Sitting in his office, Tim poured himself a much deserved drink and regarded his wife. “Karenna, I swear to the Ancients, this is not what I need right now, pre-launch on a brand new ship. You remember what that’s like, don’t you?” 

Karenna–beautiful, ageless–crossed one long leg over the other and leaned back with a pout. “I’m just saying, Tim. You’re new to this. I was a captain for forty years. And I’m tellin’ ya, the Admiralty is up to something.”

“What,” Tim said, “you think I couldn’t make Captain on my own?”

Now captain of the ESS Starfell, Tim was on a mission to recreate a path between Sol and Alpha Centauri, employing the very dust that had stunted them before. 

Because the dust giveth and the dust taketh away. Funny word, dust. A noun and a verb, the verb being a Janus word, one that means one thing and its opposite. To dust interstellar space could be spreading dark spores everywhere, or furiously brushing it away. 

Karenna was coming along on the five year journey to blaze a path between the stars, and was adjusting rather badly, indeed, to being busted down to mere civilian, subject to his captainly authority, of all people. 

No, that wasn’t quite fair. Karenna was selfless, giving, one of his biggest cheerleaders. His guiding star, with a sense of right and wrong that saw her take on an entire Admiralty. A force majeure in the form of one blessed red-headed  Ancient, touched by holy stellar particles. 

Sunbeams danced around his wife’s curly hair. They looked like dust motes, which was charming, but—

Dust was a death knell in space.

“That’s not what I mean.” Karenna rolled her eyes. “But  they’re using you. Lo and behold! You get tapped to command the ship that’s going to be out of pocket for five years, knowing there’s no way I’d want to be separated from you. And they get what they want. The only way I can come along is if I’m on sabbatical as a civilian and bonus, I’ll be out of the way.” 

Maybe Karenna was a Janus herself. Just like the verb sanction, as in, the Earth Union sanctioned a plan to use Martian technology to create a way to reconnect the star systems, but the Union also sanctioned his wife, the celebrated Admiral, because she prevented those self-same Martians from taking a few mining exoplanets—and the miners that lived on them—as compensation. 

When Tim had met Karenna, she had been a  true-blue believer in the Earth Union, enforcer of its ideals.  Now she was a thorn in its side. Troublemaker. Karenna would tell you she made the decisions she did out of love for the Union, trying to make it better. Tim wondered, however, if perhaps she just enjoyed it. More than one lifetime of toe-ing the line could make anyone gleeful at the thought of inciting rebellion in the name of justice.

Tim contemplated the end of his highball of whiskey, looking at Karenna through distorted glass as she extolled the lengths to which the Union supposedly went in order to stymie her. “Seems a little you-centered there.” 

“Maybe,” Karenna mused, “they’re hoping you’ll keep an eye on me.” 

Tim snorted. “They’d have a high opinion of my ability to keep up with you. Besides, what would you even be doing?”

Karenna crossed her arms and pursed her lips. “You know, this ship…” she began slowly. 

“I’m not sure you should finish that thought, K.” 

Antagonym, that was another term for that type of word, which brought to mind antagonist, like the way he and Karenna had been the last few months, duking and sparring and circling, waiting for the other to land the death punch. They cleaved to each other during the original crisis that led to the collapse of the space lanes, but the current spate of disasters were cleaving them apart. They were bound for Sol, but were chafing at being bound for life.

“It has an amazing cross-section of humanity. Union officers, but also civilian scientists, and Coralie theologians, and Martians, even. I’m thinking,” she said, tapping her chin, “I can gather some intel on what Mars is up to, and do some influence ops to right the Union’s thinking.” 

“I’m thinking you have too much time on your hands. You need a hobby. Ever try knitting? Making ceramic cats?” 

“I’m serious, Tim.” 

And that was the problem, wasn’t it? Speaking up was one thing, but Tim knew his wife. She wasn’t one to stoop to half-measures. It was one of the things he loved about her. Why just yell about the Union’s faults when she could disrupt it completely and work to put new folks in charge?

He blew out a breath. “And I’m serious. I’m the captain of this ship. The senior Fleet officer, once we get out there in the black. I know you still think of me as that down-on-his-luck pilot you met on your ship, but I have a job, and one of them is not letting anyone under my purview foment unrest. Unless you don’t want to hitch a ride with us. I’ll drop you off.” 

She whistled low in appreciation. “You’re hot when you’re commanding.” She gave him an apologetic smile and came closer, sighing happily as he pulled her in his lap. 

Contronyms, that was another term. They were both older, and weathered, not the same love-struck pair they’d been at the beginning, but they could weather any storm. Hopefully.

He buried his face in her hair. “Promise me you won’t stir up trouble?” 

“I’ll try to respect your authority. But my opinions are my own, you know?”

He mmhd, breathing in her scent. Sanguine. Confidently cheerful. 

She ruffled his hair in turn, and left him to his work. 

He sat alone in a darkened captain’s office, and groaned in frustration. Sanguine also meant cheerfully bloodthirsty. Like the instinct that led him to accept a captaincy, in exchange for a job as a snitch. 

He was being unfair to himself, for sure. The captaincy wasn’t his motivation. Ancients knew he had never put much stock in rank, or in pure ambition. But when one immortal man took stellar dust particles and cast them past the heliosphere of a backwoods star system, he created a chain reaction that led to the entropic collapse of humanity’s interstellar space lanes. And like his wife, Tim would do anything to serve the Union. Reconnecting Alpha Centauri and Sol was his mandate–and so was preventing his wife from doing anything that would bring chaos at a time they need to stand united.

He pushed a hidden button and spoke, throat coated in ashes, voice thick with regret. “Did you get that, sir?”

“Copy,” came the voice. “Keep your head, Captain. Our analysts think our disgraced Admiral is going to make a move soon.” 

Tim signed off, and put his head in his hands, trying to ignore the crumbling ruins of his marriage all around him.

I had two really awesome CPs assigned to me this week! I really enjoyed reading their stories, and their comments on mine were so helpful.

The main thing they both said was that there was quite a lot of information up front in the story. I was worried about that, so it was good to get confirmation. In this edit, I tried to move things around a little bit. I’m afraid I didn’t do it very well–I literally edited on my phone on an airplane with a toddler kicking my head–and it might be a bit choppy? Oh well, we shall see!

The stardust in our souls

When Tim was young, little did he know that stardust was powerful enough to turn a man immortal. Or that it could bring a civilization to its knees.

Now captain of the ESS Starfell, he was on a mission to recreate a path between Sol and Alpha Centauri, employing the very dust that had stunted them before. 

Sitting in his office, he pourrd himself a much deserved drink and regarded his wife. “Karenna, I swear to the Ancients, this is not what I need right now, pre-launch on a brand new ship. You remember what that’s like, don’t you?” 

Karenna, his beautiful, ageless, immortal wife—one of those blessed Ancients touched by stardust—crossed one long leg over the other and leaned back with a pout. “I’m just saying, Tim. You’re new to this. I was a captain for forty years. And I’m tellin’ ya, the Admiralty is up to something.”

His wife was coming along on the five year journey to blaze a path between the stars, and she was adjusting rather badly, indeed, to being busted down to mere civilian, subject to his captainly authority, of all people. 

“What,” Tim said, “you think I can’t make Captain on my own?”

Sunbeams danced around his wife’s curly red hair. They looked like dust motes, which was charming, but—

Dust was a death knell in space.

Long ago, his mother told him that all humans were made of stardust. And Tim would look in all his nooks and crannies, checking belly lint and earwax and boogers, trying to find evidence of sun particles, but all he could find were the lumpy, stinky, bulbous leavings of Earth-bound bodies. And promptly put it out of his mind.

But when one immortal man took stellar dust particles and cast them past the heliosphere of a backwoods star system, he created a chain reaction that led to the entropic collapse of humanity’s interstellar space lanes. 

“That’s not what I mean.” Karenna rolled her eyes. “But  they’re using you. Lo and behold! You get tapped to command the ship that’s going to be out of pocket for five years, knowing there’s no way I’d want to be separated from you. And they get what they want. The only way I can come along is if I’m on sabbatical as a civilian and bonus, I’ll be out of the way.” 

The dust giveth and the dust taketh away. Funny word, dust. A noun and a verb, the verb being a Janus word, one that means one thing and its opposite. To dust interstellar space could be spreading dark spores everywhere, or furiously brushing it away. 

Just like the verb sanction, as in, the Earth Union sanctioned a plan to use Martian technology to create a way to reconnect the star systems, but the Union also sanctioned his wife, the celebrated Admiral, because she prevented those self-same Martians from taking a few mining exoplanets—and the miners that lived on them—as compensation. 

Tim contemplated the end of his highball of whiskey, looking at Karenna through distorted glass. “Seems a little you-centered there.” 

Antagonym, that was another term for that type of word, which brought to mind antagonist, like the way he and Karenna had been the last few months, duking and sparring and circling, waiting for the other to land the death punch. They cleaved to each other during the original crisis that led to the collapse of the space lanes, but the current spate of disasters were cleaving them apart. They were bound for Sol, but were chafing at being bound for life. 

“Maybe,” Karenna mused, “they’re hoping you’ll keep an eye on me.” 

Tim snorted. “They’d have a high opinion of my ability to keep up with you. Besides, what would you even be doing?”

Karenna crossed her arms and pursed her lips. “You know, this ship…” she began slowly. 

“I’m not sure you should finish that thought, K.” 

“It has an amazing cross-section of humanity. Union officers, but also civilian scientists, and Coralie theologians, and Martians, even. I’m thinking,” she said, tapping her chin, “I can gather some intel on what Mars is up to, and do some influence ops to right the Union’s thinking.” 

“I’m thinking you have too much time on your hands. You need a hobby. Ever try knitting? Making ceramic cats?” 

“I’m serious, Tim.” 

He blew out a breath. “And I’m serious. I’m the captain of this ship. The senior Fleet officer, once we get out there in the black. I know you still think of me as that down-on-his-luck pilot you met on your ship, but I have a job, and one of them is not letting anyone under my purview foment unrest. Unless you don’t want to hitch a ride with us. I’ll drop you off.” 

She whistled low in appreciation. “You’re hot when you’re commanding.” She gave him an apologetic smile and came closer, sighing happily as he pulled her in his lap. 

Contronyms, that was another term. They were both older, and weathered, not the same love-struck pair they’d been at the beginning, but they could weather any storm. Hopefully.

He buried his face in her hair. “Promise me you won’t stir up trouble?” 

“I’ll try to respect your authority. But my opinions are my own, you know?”

He mmhd, breathing in her scent. Sanguine. Confidently cheerful. 

She ruffled his hair in turn, and left him to his work. 

He sat alone in a darkened captain’s office, and groaned in frustration. Sanguine also meant cheerfully bloodthirsty. Like the instinct that led him to accept a captaincy, in exchange for a job as a snitch. 

He pushed a hidden button and spoke, throat coated in ashes, voice thick with regret. “Did you get that, sir?”

“Copy,” came the voice. “Keep your head, Captain. Our analysts think our disgraced Admiral is going to make a move soon.” 

Tim signed off, and put his head in his hands, trying to ignore the crumbling ruins of his marriage all around him.