Tag: space opera

Cradle Robbers – Captain Arlon Stoddard Adventures book 11 – out now

~ Sean Monaghan ~ Leave a comment

Finally, finally, we have Cradle Robbers out in the world. Book number 11 in the series. That even surprises me, really. I have such fun writing these books, that I seem to have just continued writing more. As I post this, the 12th book – Margin Dwellers –  has already been written and will soon enter the editing-proofing-preparation machine and should be out later in the year.

Cradle Robbers

Royd Melgrave slams himself into an emergency vacuum suit as klaxons blast around him. The refinery station seems doomed.

When Authority investigators Captain Arlon Stoddard and his crew arrive, the refinery wreck follows an erratic orbit and little evidence remains.

What they do find only raises more questions. Questions that might turn things inside out.

Can they figure it out before more the destruction of more installations?

 

All of the books are space adventures, but this one might just be the most space opera of them all.

Releasing on March 20th, Cradle Robbers is available for preorder from your favorite retailer through the Universal Book Link here. ebook $5.99, print $16.99.

But, as I’m working on developing direct sales through my own store, the ebook is available right now, directly from me through Shopify/Bookfunnel for the same price – $5.99.

Catch up with the rest of the series here on the Captain Arlon Stoddard page. The first three books, Asteroid Jumpers, Ice Hunters and Ship Tracers, remain at the special price of $3.99 to help readers get started. Eventually they will show up on the Sean Monaghan store as well.

You’ll notice that there are layout changes to the covers of the last two books. I’m working back through the inventory to update the look, but with several series, numerous standalone novels, and a whole bunch of short stories and novellas, this is taking a while. I’ll get to them as the process progresses.

Thanks for reading. More news soon. Yes, soon. I’ve neglected posting here, but plans are afoot to put something up on a more regular basis. Did you say weekly? Sure, why not?

Cheers, Sean

 

 

The Blaze of Pollux – short story collection

~ Sean Monaghan ~ Leave a comment

Sometimes I write stories that are a little off beat and unusual. At least, I like to think they are – a writer being the worst judge of their own work, it may be that these are simply cookie cutter stories in the same vein as everything else I write, though somehow, I don’t think so. Take a look at the blurb:

The Blaze of Pollux

Ice cream on a space liner headed for disaster. A hike with a difference.  Strange animals on the loose. Odd solutions to trash overload. A scam artist lost in space.

Immerse yourself in another collection of offbeat science fiction stories from award winner Sean Monaghan.

Cover illustration © Eevlva | Dreamstime.com.

 

In the early days of my indie publication explorations – 2014 and 2015 – I put out four collections – Balance, Balance ii, Balance iii and Unbalanced, on the premise that they were neatly balanced collections, but the last one – Unbalanced – brought together quirky stories – a manga character on the loose in the real world, a transcript of a future NASCAR race commentary – and turned out to be a fun collection. It’s even sold a few copies – thanks if you were one of the purchasers. I hope you enjoyed that one.

With the passage of years, I hope I’m a better storyteller, so I would like to think that these ones are a little better than those. Of course, as I mention in the book’s introduction, a writer is the worst judge of their own work. I’m pretty sure that the cover and the interior look better than those early fumbling attempts.

Pick up The Blaze of Pollux from your favorite retailer: ebook $4.99, print $9.99. – Universal book link.

These ones below are still available. No universal booklink, but a search in your faborite retailer will bring them to the top. Sometimes I might even go back and redo those covers. So many covers, so little time!

Novellas in October and November

~ Sean Monaghan ~ Leave a comment

I like to have new book releases out on the 20th of the month, and for October and November, these will be novellas from two of my series. The first novellas in both. My novellas sit around a quarter the length of a novel – say around a hundred pages. I think Amazon labels them in with “90 minute reads” or something.

First up in on October 2oth is “Ortanide Steppers” from my Captain Arlon Stoddard Adventures series. Think deep space adventures with mysteries and puzzles around the galaxy. Technically a “novelette” in SF terms, but boy, keeping track of the names for the different lengths…

Ortanide. A planet with a unique geography, a rich history and a strange political system.

A political system that defies Captain Arlon Stoddard and his crew.

Restrained in a dank cell by the very people he came to help, Arlon faces the choice of violating the charters he works to uphold.

Or certain death.

A Captain Arlon Stoddard novella that pits the crew against possibly their most heinous foe yet.

 

Priced especially at $2.99 for the ebook, and $6.99 for the paperback. A bargain, right?

Next out on November 20th is “Cold Highway” from my Cole Wright Thrillers series. Pretty standard kind of thriller, adventure, gunplay stuff here. I’ve always liked those frozen highways and figured that might be a fun place to set a story. I was right, at least in writing it. I hope it’s as much fun to read.

A trip north of the border takes Cole Wright into the heart of snowbound Canada. Friendly people, vast distances, tough vehicles, isolation.

When a breakdown looms, Wright finds himself caught in the white, compacted landscape. A road thirty feet wide, hemmed in by the piled up ridges left by snowploughs. And an endless forest that could hide just about anything.

Unfriendly territory. Dangerous places.

A Cole Wright novella that focuses down on a single moment where the slightest error could be his last.

Still reasonably priced at $3.99 for the ebook, and $7.99 for the paperback.

So far all my paperbacks have come through Amazon, but I’m testing this one through Draft 2 Digital as well, in a slightly larger format, and ending up priced at $10.99. We’ll see how that goes.

As with previous months, I’ll have short stories out in the lead up to the releases. “Sea Skimmers”, which is the first Captain Arlon Stoddard short story, and followed by “Cardinals” which is a Cole Wright story with a difference – Lieutenant Ione Anders as the lead character (you’ll remember her from the first Cole Wright novel The Arrival) and Cole himself tagging along as a background character.

Details to come.

Remember you can explore the series from the pages available in the menu at the top of the page on the website here.

Thanks for reading.

Sean

SF Novellas, etc.

~ Sean Monaghan ~ Leave a comment

I have a new novella, Barrens, out at the start of May. It seemed like a good moment to mention novellas and where they sit in the scheme of things. Well, in the scheme of my writing.

First, a little about Barrens.

***

A beautiful piece of engineering, interstellar ship, Elegia Fortune should function perfectly. When the vessel falls out of warp, Lila Sansom and the crew find themselves with more problems than they can count.

Including an impossible planet in the wrong place

Deep space adventure at its finest.

Available now for preorder for release on May 1st. ebook $3.99, print $5.99

While I do write a lot of SF novels, and a lot of SF stories, I also write plenty at intermediate lengths. Most of my novels run between 300 and 450 pages, and my short stories anywhere from 5,000 to 10,000 words, or about 20 to 40 pages.

Novellas are a fun length. Now, it depends who you ask which label gets applied to which length. Some will say anything from 15,000 words to 30,000 words is a novella, and 30,000 words and up is a novel. Some will say even 50,000 words is only a short novel.

Owlcation has a definition that seems to broadly fit – flash fiction: 53 – 1,000 words, short stories: 3,500 – 7,500, novelettes: 7,500 – 17,000, novellas: 17,000 – 40,000, novels: 40,000 + words.

I like the idea the flash fiction starts from 53 words. Very specific. And Hemingway possibly wrote a six word story – see Wikipedia for better analysis than I can provide.

Still, sometimes my stories grow into little monsters, larger than short stories, but not quite novels. I think part of what is fun about them is that I can explore the worlds and the characters with more depth than in a short story, and also that the commitment of time that a novel takes isn’t there.

To blow my own trumpet, a good example is my own novella “Goldie” in this year’s January/February issue of Asimov’s. A longer tale, taking place in a wide world, with numerous characters, over the passage of weeks and months.

To the reader’s advantage here is that they can be priced a little lower than novels (well, they are quicker reads). So my novellas sit at the $3.99 mark for ebooks, and, mostly $5.99 for print. Print is a different beast, so for some of the slightly longer ones, that price creeps up toward ten bucks. Still a bargain, I think. I will keep the ebook price at $3.99 for pretty much anything under the 40,000 word mark.

Universal Book Links here:

Cami, Metta and the Cube

Fubrelli’s Ghost

Lucy Yesterday

Load Bearing Member

Also should mention that in April there are a couple of other things showing up. Book seven of the Captain Arlon Stoddard Adventures, Island Hoppers will be out on the 20th (that one’s a novel), and a twisted time travel novella Lucy Yesterday out on the 10th.

Thanks for reading.

 

 

 

 

Underworld Climbers cover reveal

~ Sean Monaghan ~ Leave a comment

Book Six of my Captain Arlon Stoddard Adventures series will be out on June 20th. Just into the final formatting, writing of a blurb and those last few bits of tidy up before it can get out into the world

Underworld Climbers might even be my personal favorite of the series, so far, but then, usually the most recent thing I’ve written is my favorite.

The cover is by the amazing Luca Oleastri, whose images appear on several of the other Captain Arlon Stoddard books.

Blurb and links and more details coming soon. Meanwhile, this is the wonderful cover. Thanks Luca.

Underworld Climbers temp

Raven Rising in a new bundle – Sci-Fi July Redux

~ Sean Monaghan ~ Leave a comment

scifireduxad
My deep space adventure novel Raven Rising will be out on July 4th in a new bundle, featuring novels by Dean Wesley Smith, Kristine Kathryn Rusch and Kevin J. Anderson among others.

Barbara G. Tarn, the curator, has put together a cool promo video trailer here

The books in the bundle are:

Veiled Alliances
by Kevin J. Anderson

New California
by Raymund Eich

Trek This
by Robert Jeschonek

Adventurer (Star Minds Lone Wolves)
by Barbara G. Tarn

Stealing from Pirates
by Stefon Mears

Cradle of the Day
by Meyari McFarland

A Jack By Any Other Name
by Lesley L. Smith

The Runabout
by Kristine Kathryn Rusch

Sector Justice
by Dean Wesley Smith

Raven Rising redoIn the meantime, I’ve updated the cover layout of the novel from its version on Bundlerabbit. I’ve had a little advice on design, and reviewed a course I did a while back, and also am working on adapting to changes (not that I’m ever a good example of someone who adapts well to change) – such as the size of my name on there.

I’ve also tinkered a little with the blurb for the novel.

“Light years from home, Starship Raven went down in a horrific blazing wreck. Crack investigator Angelie Gunnarson and her team thrive on these kinds of impossible mysteries. But the Raven might have more secrets than even Angelie can handle. An action-packed short sci-fi novel from the award-winning author.”

The bundle  is available for $7.99 from usual retailers. A pretty good bargain for all those books.

Latest novel: The City Builders – out on April 16th

~ Sean Monaghan ~ Leave a comment

City BuildersMy latest release continues the theme of strange and dangerous environments challenging the characters. I’ve always been fascinated by the idea of vast cities so it I had fun taking free rein creating the world of Mackelle. The blurb goes like this:

Desra Parker loves investigating strange planets. But when missiles shoot her ship down over Mackelle, Desra and her crew find themselves in a desperate race for survival. Battling the elements and relentless building-sized robots, Desra needs to unravel the mysteries of Mackelle’s endless city if she’s going to keep anyone alive. And figure out a way to get home.
I was lucky enough to get this wonderful cover illustration by Bertrandb (Dreamstime.com) which perfectly conveys the setting.
Available from your usual retailers, including
ebook – $5.99
Print $17.99
Amazon

Wakers – New story coming out in August Asimov’s

~ Sean Monaghan ~ 2 Comments

ASF_JUNE2016_400x580 Well, this is the cover for the June issue, but I’ll post the August cover when that issue comes out… with my story “Wakers” inside.

Here’s the blurb from the Asimov’s website:

In Sean Monaghan’s tense August 2016 novelette, unforeseen dangers have disrupted an interstellar journey. Although the work of self-sacrificing astronauts has kept the spaceship running for hundreds of years, the voyage may soon be permanently altered by fresh “Wakers.”

I’m looking forward to it. Keep an eye out for the issue. It should be out in early July.

The Wreck of the Emerald Sky – new novella in The Colored Lens

~ Sean Monaghan ~ Leave a comment

.

My novella The Wreck of The Emerald Sky has just been published in The Colored Lens.

Filled with bright, imaginative speculative fiction, The Colored Lens is a quarterly, available on Kindle for $2.99.

The Wreck of the Emerald Sky is a sci-fi adventure story set in my Barris Space universe. If you’ve read my stories “Barris Debris” in Deep Space Terror or “Eltanin Hoop Anomaly Rescue” in Will It Go Faster If I Push This?, then you might be familiar with the setting.

Here are the first couple of paragraphs as a taster
__________________________________________

Chapter one

Derel Larsen sat bolt upright in the bed as his ear-roll chimed. He was halfway to Meriam’s room before he realized that the chime wasn’t her security alert. It was just a phone call.
“Larsen,” he said, thumbing the connect. He kept going towards Meriam’s door.
“Larsen?” a voice said. One of the controllers at flight. Jamie, Larsen thought. Nice woman, even if she did have to confirm his name right after he’d said it.
“Medical leave is over, sport,” Jamie said.

_________________________________________