Day 1: Landing

Day 1:

I woke up just off the beach on Serendipity, a bit south of where the original drop had been planned. Things have obviously gone wrong, but what exactly I don’t know, as I’ve got no suit, no transmitter, and only the clothes that I had when I reported for medical clearance before the drop.

Well, and this notebook, obviously. It’s supposed to be used to log rock and mineral formations, drawn maps, general spelunking safety stuff, but I think this qualifies as a safety emergency.

I was supposed to transport with a team of six others, including a medic. I am alone. I was supposed to be dropped at a deep ravine. I’m on a hilly beach next to what appears to be an ocean, but surrounded by fields.

I’m not even sure I’m on Serendipity, to be totally honest. I’m just a rookie, and without my transmitter or computer, I could be anywhere.

The Company provided extensive survival training, so I’m not dead yet. I found a storage box of supplies: some wood, an axe, a pickaxe, fish, bread, and an apple. I’m not sure if it’s from  the ship, or something that someone here on the planet left behind. I did some light exploring.

I’ve spotted some horses and some chickens (ducks? they like swimming but sound like chickens), and cows, but nothing resembling civilization.

The plants here are amazing – mushrooms the size of maple trees, oaks four times as big around as me.

I found a small underground cave full of freshwater to spend the night in. It’s damp and uncomfortable  sleeping on the ground, but better than being out in the open.

At least this place seems friendly.

Map of where I've landed on what I'm assuming is Serendipity
Map of where I’ve landed on what I’m assuming is Serendipity

2018 Young Explorers Adventure Guide Kickstarter!

The Kickstarter for the 2018 Young Explorer Adventures Guide is just over halfway funded to its goal. My story, “The Smell of Home” is in it, so if you’d like to read it and a whole ton of other great YA fiction about exploration, go give it a pledge.

One of the things I like about this particular Kickstarter is the number of tiers specifically dedicated to donating copies of the anthology to libraries. The goal is to give kids works that they can see themselves in, and I think we’ve got a great anthology to do just that.

2018 Young Explorer’s Adventure Guide

I’ve sold “The Smell of Home”, a story about what it means to be where you belong”, to Dreaming Robot Press! It will be published in the 2018 Young Explorer’s Adventure Guide. The Guide is a yearly anthology of middle-grade science fiction. They believe in publishing for a diverse range of characters and situations, which makes me proud to be one of their authors.

You can still pick up a copy of the 2017 Young Explorer’s Adventure Guide if you need something to hold you over until the 2018 edition is out.

What the hell happened here?

Sometimes, you need to refresh things a little, and sometimes you need to refresh them a lot.

The old version of the site was built around a comic I haven’t faithfully updated in over half a decade, and a world where blogging was one’s main way of getting one’s voice heard.

But now we have Twitter and Medium and all kinds of other sharey things – and we have blogs about our work and blogs we edit about our work, and this one? This needed a refresh post haste.

And frankly, I’m looking forward to refreshing the site again in another 13 years.