Short Story: The Breach

Content warnings: emergency in space, moderate blood/gore/horror

“Is this the last one?” Delisa asked her shift partner, Bernie, as he handed her one of the last fresh in-line filter for the Bishop’s water system. The system was already running slower than she liked, but they’d have to hold off on using the last one until the supply carrier made it back from the depot on Rigel 4.

Bernie poked at his data pad a few times before nodding. “Yeah. You gonna be at the pub tonight?”

With a sigh, Delisa replied, “I don’t know. It’s been a long day. I think Miriam—”

WHAM!

Everything shook, throwing Delisa onto the floor, then up the wall. By the time she got her wits about her, the pressure of the wall against her body eased and she was left floating in mid-air. CentriGrav was down. As Delisa met Bernie’s eye, the alarms blared. Covering her ears to shield them from the ear-splitting noise, Delisa kicked off the nearest wall and toward the status panel near the door.

“Shit, there’s a breach in Epsilon Sector.” Light and life, and they’d felt it most of the wheel away in Rho! Delisa’s stomach dropped as she realized there were bound to be casualties. Hopefully Miriam was safe in Engineering Main. She scrolled through the crew message log. “Tal thinks it was a meteor strike. Blew a six-inch hole clear through Epsilon and into the CG generator. That’s why the Grav system went down.”

“How much O2 are we losing?” Bernie’s eyes were wide with fright, his normally flat brown hair floating in a halo around his head, his right hand white-knuckled on the stability handle next to the door.

Looking at the status bars as they updated every second or two, Delisa grimly said, “Too much.”

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Book announcement: Spilled Coffee (1022 Magnolia Way, Book 2)

Chicago, 1999. College senior Nisha Anand meets her new psychology professor – a man who could be instrumental for getting into grad school – in the worst way possible. And of course, her crush just had to witness the whole thing. Jaime finally gets a job, but the working world is nothing like she thought it would be, and she leans on her boyfriend Sean for help. April and Brad lament an invitation with a plus-one, rather than a plus-three.

Available now on Kindle

(USD $0.99, 54 pages, ~45 minute read)

This is the second book in the 1022 Magnolia Way series of “sitcom” novellas I’m working on. If you’d like to be notified when new installments of the series go up, join the mailing list here.

Catch up on the first title of the series, Moving Day.

Book Announcement: Moving Day (1022 Magnolia Way, Book 1)


I wrote a book!

Moving Day is available now for Amazon Kindle (USD $0.99, 51 pages, ~45 minute read, cover art commissioned from starkurt​ )

A group of four college friends (Jaime, Sean, April, and Brad) move into their new apartment in Chicago, ready to take on the adult world of 1999. College senior Nisha Anand meets all four of her new neighbors, developing an instant crush on one of them. A pair of missing beds cause sore backs and sore feelings. 

This is the first in the 1022 Magnolia Way series of “sitcom” novellas I have planned. If you’d like to be notified when new installments of the series go up, join the mailing list here.

New Beginnings

Welcome to my site! This will be my outlet for my original fiction works, all of which are works in progress that are otherwise unpublished. These works will be accessible to my Patreon patrons (to launch in the next day or so).

Upcoming novels (working titles):

Untitled OT4 Sitcom
Four friends, fresh off college graduation, try to make their way in a new city. Between getting to know the girl from the apartment across the hall and dodging their cranky landlord, they find out what it means to be independent in the big city.
Genre: comedy, friendship, romance, coming of age
Content: polyamory, identity crises

Nyctophobia
The small town of Ottowa, Illinois is invaded by deadly hyperdimensional beings, and only a group of teenagers can stop them.
Genre: Sci-fi, horror, friendship, romance
Content: minor character death, polyamory, post-traumatic stress

Calico
Adara isn’t exactly sure who she is or what she’s capable of, aside from the flashiest part of her biology, her resistance to fire. When she and her colleagues are assigned to investigate the death of a recently-retired military witch, and when the dead man’s closest friend insists on barging into the investigation, they all get pulled into a wider net of crimes that need to be stopped before more lives are lost.
Genre: urban fantasy, friendship, mystery
Content: violence (magical, gun, and physical), pseudo-soulmate bonding, developing m/m relationship

Cardinal Inc
Former CIA agent Helen Freeman has decided to start on a new path in life, away from the agency. Having decided to work in the private sector, she hires a few friends and former associates and starts taking jobs. If the jobs they take are a little less than legal, well so be it. And if the relationships she develops with her team are not quite the norm, well that’s nobody else’s business, now is it? The newly-formed Cardinal, Inc. has to toe the line between pulling jobs no one else can and drawing the attention of FBI SSA Nina Strudwick, a divorcee with too much paranoia and too much time on her hands. Oh yeah, and she’s Helen’s former lover to boot.

More novels to come…