“In the Grass” (a Star Wars snippet)

“You didn’t come to bed last night.”

She shifted her shoulders, drew the shawl tighter around her shoulders. The yarn was soft against her fingers as she tangled them through the knots of its pattern, the garment smelling of laundry soap, faintly, Dalsuna’s cologne. The patch of grass between the house and the edge of the water was small, but large enough for them to play with their son without too much fear of him toppling over into the canal. She sat in the center of that grass, her bare toes slowly going numb in the morning damp and chill, watching as the sun slowly crept up over the canal and the parkland beyond. It was a rare sight, that much green on the other side of the canal. How her husband had managed to find it, she wasn’t sure—nor had she ever asked.

She was wise enough now to know when to leave things alone.

Sometimes, at least.

“Tag?”

“I took a walk,” she said, patting a spot in the grass next to her. “I couldn’t sleep—wasn’t going to be able to sleep. I’d meant to clear my head and come back, but I ended up at Mickie’s and then I ended up at the school.”

“You went flying.”

She nodded, staring at the sunrise as he settled next to her. Calloused fingers wrapped around hers, squeezed gently. A faint smile curved her lips and she squeezed back, glancing at him. “I didn’t mean to make you worry.”

“Me, worry? Why would I worry? It’s not like my wife isn’t a former intelligence officer who’s probably pissed off more than her share of people on both sides of the not-war-anymore. It’s not like I’ve gotten used to you being there to reassure me when I wake up in a cold sweat at three in the morning after another nightmare.”

She winced. “I’m sorry, Dal.”

He exhaled a long breath, then wrapped his arms around her, resting his cheek against her braided hair as she leaned into his embrace. “It’s okay. It took a couple seconds, but I could still feel you, so that was enough.”

“I should’ve been here,” she murmured into the soft cotton of his shirt. She closed her eyes and breathed in, tension draining from them both with each breath, each beat of their hearts. “I hadn’t meant to be out all night. I thought I was just clearing my head.”

“The old ghosts swam back up, huh?”

She nodded, pressing her face against his shoulder. Her voice came muffled; likely he felt the words more than heard them. “There’s so many. And so much I just—left behind.”

“What brought it on this time? It’s usually not for no reason.”

“A letter from an old friend,” she said softly. “Reassurance that he’s okay. He told me I did the right thing.”

“But you’re still not sure.” He pulled back, peering down at her with a furrowed brow. Those green eyes of his snared her all over again, like they had the first time she’d seen him in the mess hall on a base that didn’t exist anymore a hundred light years away. “Even after all this time.”

“No,” she said slowly. “I did the right thing. But it’s not over. Not yet.”
His frown deepened and he canted his head to one side. “What’s not over?”

“The war,” she whispered, then leaned into his chest again. “We’ve all just stopped fighting for now. But it’s not over. I don’t know if it ever will be.”

“It is for us,” he said, squeezing her tight and burying his nose in his hair. He was quiet for a moment, then added, almost too quietly to hear, “At least for now.”

She nodded. “Yeah. At least for now.”

They sat there together in the grass as Corel cleared the horizon, its light glittering on the water of the canal and off the metal and glass of the city around them.

On the Epsilon universe and its history

There are some universes that as readers, we just can’t shake.

Writers have the same problem, and as is the case with readers, viewers, fandoms, etc., the results can be both good and bad.

I like to think what’s happened with the Epsilon universe has largely been good, though I know the wait for some of the people who have read Broken Stars has been pretty bad, and while I regret that it’s been such a long wait, I have to admit that this universe is kind of my baby and I really want to get things right—which is an impulse I think most people can understand.

I started working on elements of what would become the Epsilon universe back in junior high school, though at the time I didn’t know it.  It wouldn’t be until high school that I produced the first extremely rough draft of what I thought was going to be a single book that told a very large but very rough story.  That draft will never again see the light of day (it was that bad) but it let me work through a lot of ideas and led to my growth as a writer in a lot of very good ways.

As I worked my way through various drafts of several different projects, the universe of the Epsilon series began to take shape—I used to call it “UoC,” short for “universe of conflict” which was a terrible, if accurate, name.  As it grew, the universe became increasingly complex and gained a history—and historians—of its own.

The in-setting history of the Epsilon universe starts in the 2050s with the foundation of a unit called Freedom Alpha—the exploits of the unit itself were less important than the people it brought together.  Eventually, after official first contact with several of the major alien races present in the Epsilon universe (most notably the Pharridan and the Menah) and humanity’s forays into interstellar space, the unit name comes up again, this time attached to a unit of the Stellar Marines assigned to an off-world post.  That unit, among others, is one of the few to survive humanity’s first encounters with a hostile alien race relatively intact.  It becomes the core of the 14th Stormer Elites, a unit that becomes important during the First Preytax War (circa 2105-2115) and remains important during the Second Preytax War (circa 2120-2127).  These wars are the ones that Korea Cooper—Sam Cooper’s MIA older sister, Luc Ross’s lover, and the former head of the Resistance in the sector Luc now runs—studied as part of her graduate work in history.

Those wars are far more important than anyone appearing in Broken Stars and Redeemer realize—at least at this point—with the possible notable exception of Alexander Sotheby (but more on that another time).

Up until recently, I thought the Preytax were some kind of hyperevolved reptilian species, bipedal, highly intelligent, and brutal.  That’s changed thanks to something someone brought to my attention via tumblr and I honestly wish I could find the photo credit for this thing because it’s incredible—and I have no idea where it originated, but it was like a lightning strike when I really took a good hard look at it.

It is the face of a collective nightmare, something that folklore has often warned cultures about for centuries—creatures with pale sink, black eyes, sharp teeth.

Why wouldn’t that be the face of a hostile, hungry race that has preyed upon the sentients of the galaxy for centures?

I don’t know who’s responsible for the original picture, but I am grateful to them because they finally showed me the face of a race that has reshaped the history of humanity in the Epsilon universe—and continues to do so up through Broken Stars and its sequels.

But more on that later.