Hello friends and fans!
For the past seven years I’ve been crafting a story arc set within the Quantum Series that takes the quirky characters and residents of the planet Deanna through their darkest, most uncertain times yet. With the first two books in that story arc already available, and the third only just completed and awaiting publication – and the last two still in the works, I thought I would give you a little more detail about the story being told across these five extraordinary books.
As you’re probably aware, since 2016 I’ve been working on a span of interconnected stories in the Quantum Series! While the first two in the current story-arc have already been available for a few years, I’ve kept you all informed about my progress in writing the books that follow in the same story-arc – and doing so more or less simultaneously – give or take a couple of breaks in between!
As you can imagine, it has been a gargantuan task, but this process is finally drawing to a close – with “Underground Movement“, the first of the three new books, already completed and ready to publish, and the other two already well partway written!
This also serves as a reminder that the first two, (book 5) “Prodigal Sun” (published February 23, 2017) and the second (book 6) “High Steaks“, (published in June 2017) are available on Amazon, and also on Audible as audiobooks narrated by Darla Middlebrook!
In the meantime, I thought I would give you a little more detail about the story being told across these five books – “Prodigal Sun“, “High Steaks“, “Underground Movement“, “Xanadu” and “The Last Hurrah” – books 5, 6, 7 ,8 and 9 in the Quantum Series! Their promo pages are already in place, marked “coming soon” on my website, and their covers are there for you to see too!
Those of you who have read the other books in this series will already be familiar with the quirky little Terran Colony called Deanna, where strange things can happen, and often do! Deanna is known throughout the Terran Empire as being the center of weirdness – and is even rumored to be categorized as a new element on the Periodic Table (under ‘Wr‘ for weirdness). It orbits a star called Ramalama, and is orbited by two little moons – named ‘Ding‘ and ‘Dong‘ respectively. (This is a local joke).
Readers may already be used to the happy-go-lucky style of Deanna and its inhabitants, having read them all through the first four titles, but they will find something quite different in these next four books.
As the story progresses, readers may notice some striking parallels to some current events in the real world, such as increasing sentiments of segregation, separatism, xenophobia and homophobia – fueled by a mysterious organization working from the shadows. In some ways, these three stories are the author’s social commentary on what I’ve been seeing going on around us. The main characters, naturally, deal with all these puzzling events and mounting antagonism with their usual typical flair for the dramatic – and the comical.
As the title “Prodigal Sun” may hint, there may be more than one meaning intended! Deanna, in the throes of a plan to hijack the colony away from the Terran Empire, and to make the star it orbits independent, represents the ‘Prodigal Sun’… and there is also a character in the story who has unresolved issues with his estranged father on Deanna, which is closer to the original implication of prodigal son.
Naturally, the main characters readers will remember – like Cindy-Mei Winter, Beck the Badfeller, Timaset Skooch, Dory, the crew of the loderunner Celeste, the Skegg’s Valley Dynamite Fishing Club, Fred, and of course, Johnathan Scrooby of the Time Saving Agency – treat all the issues addressed in the story with the appropriate sensitivity – albeit through their trademark determination, friendship, compassion, bravery, humanity, love – and the strength they draw from these emotions – and believe me, there are a lot of emotions in these three tales!
The story also follows what the fascist Deannan Service League (D.S.L.) has been getting up to in the background, and in particular looking at their sinister plans for all those people they’ve detained and sent to a place far from civilization, in the middle of the middle of nowhere, in the Wilds on the plain at the center of the three cities, in a concentration camp called Xanadu. “Underground Movement” sets the stage for book 8, “Xanadu”, which will deal with the combined efforts of the Loyalist Militia and the Resistance to free those imprisoned there, and the continuation of the Deannan Uncivil War.
The covers for the next two stories are included below, just to give you the bigger picture:
In these stories, readers will make the acquaintance of some new characters, including Tracey Ferris, a young bounty hunter who through an unfortunate set of circumstances becomes stranded on Deanna, and links up with the Grauffis family. Marla de Bris, is a 200 (going on 20) year old vampire who has lived on Deanna for the last 30 years, and has somehow managed to not really interact much with the Vampire – er, Underground on the planet. Vernon Carridene is another new face readers will enjoy. Extraordinary circumstances on Deanna result in this hidden community faced with the difficult decision to involve itself in mundane affairs, and having to pick sides.
Although I’ve written vampire characters into my sci-fi/fantasy stories before (“The Thirteenth Ship”) – and although I’ve written a vampire character into the setting of Deanna once before – in a short story, “Death By Vampire” – this is the first time I’ve got around to introducing the readers of the novels to these secretive and unusual characters! As the readers will discover, they have a huge capacity to entertain, aside from providing some very thought-provoking insights into events in the story!
Unlike the previous stories in this series, the scope of the story told in this trilogy is broad. If it were a movie, it would involve virtually all the characters in the previous stories – up to and including Fred the Arborian, the walking and talking sentient alien plant with a talent for camouflage; Johannes Albrecht, proprietor of that little café on Lupini Square, where coffee is meant to be drunk while standing up; and a certain Ruminarii refugee living secretly in the Grauffis family basement! Each of them manage to get an opportunity to contribute meaningfully to the story.
Among the broad spectrum of people being persecuted by the fascists, there is the usual selection: LGBT+ people, including masculine women and effeminate men, non-Christian clergy, and non-Human aliens – in particular the gray-skinned Jim-waians who have settled on Deanna as refugees from their own overly-zealous religious fundementalist society on Jim-wa. This brutality, combined with the usurping of Deanna’s Terran governor, sparks off the Deannan Uncivil War. Nobody likes Nazis, after all – at least, nobody worth mentioning.
There is a host of villains, of necessity – you can hardly have such an epic tale without bad guys! These include such notable characters as Brandon Carver (a slightly inept assassin), Professor James McMillen (the new Chancellor of the Republic of Deanna), Luciferus Krant (a Sergeant Major in the fascist army who bounces when he barks), and Michael Francis (a youthful Colonel who thinks he can better the record set by the classical Nazis from the 20th century).
The villains in these three stories are generally caricatures drawn from various conservative homophobic and bigoted stereotypes prevalent in today’s world. Consequently, they behave in a certain way, and of course when their carefully laid plans go awry, or things happen to them, it is amusing, entertaining – and of course, satisfying! There are numerous scenes where the carefully laid plans of the villains are foiled in clever ways by the good guys that leave me in stitches! I usually don’t like to write two dimensional characters, and I feel that even the villains in this story – especially Brandon Carver and Sergeant-major Krant – need to have more depth to them than mere ordinary cardboard cut-out bad guys! As always, I’ve drawn on my own real-life experiences while in the military for inspiration – but oddly enough, some people just don’t seem to believe that! Go figure.
There are a number of sub-plots running through all these stories, including that of Danielle, a young transwoman who was captured by the fascists and sent to their concentration camp, Xanadu. There, by means of hunger, thirst and exposure, the inmates are disposed of. The Human body can only survive about three days without water intake, making it a fairly speedy process. This particular sub-plot tells of how she comes to be at Xanadu, and the quest of some of the main characters to find and rescue her from that fate.
Astute readers may find more than one hidden, or should I say ‘less obvious,’ message in my stories – and these three tales will be no different in that context! Although the context of the events in the story is quite dark – and at times, Stygian – the humor and the successes of the lead characters in slowly reversing the fortunes of the villains, lighten the mood a great deal and provide hope for both the reader and their favorite characters. I feel it would be well worth it for fans of sci-fi/fantasy to read these books – but then, I’m biased – I wrote them!
…and there you have it, without giving too many spoilers, you have a rough idea of what to expect when the latest three books in this story become available!
Yes, I know, it’s been quite a wait – and believe me, I can’t wait to start getting feedback from readers telling me what they thought of the entire story arc, their favorite bits, and of course, what it made them feel!
Meanwhile, I will be preparing to launch book 7, while continuing my work on books 8 and 9, which will be coming out – well, hopefully before the end of this year – but definitely before the end of the world (although considering all the weird shit in my news feed these days, I may have to hurry)!
If you haven’t yet read all of the previous titles in the Quantum Series, you still have some time to catch up before the others hit the shelves! You can find all my books on Amazon. I will be posting more updates on progress etc. as time goes by!
Cheers!
All material copyright © Christina Engela, 2023.