Bringing Stella Home

by Joe Vasicek

  That movie had a HUGE impact on me. Not being able to save the people I love is the scariest thing I can possibly imagine. Even worse would be if I could save them, but they refused to be saved! For some reason, all of this came flooding into my mind as I was plotting this novel. It clicked almost immediately, and I knew what would happen: the main character would try to rescue his brother and sister from the Hameji, only to have his brother die in his arms, and his sister refuse to be rescued.

  The first draft was tough, and not just like all first drafts are. I got a lot of help from Brandon Sanderson and the writing group from the class, and decided to take the summer of 2009 off in order to finish it (thank goodness for scholarships!). When Ben died, I was in a funk for a few days, and the closer I came to finishing it the more depressed I became. However, I knew I was doing something right—and after reading Legend by David Gemmell (one of the most awesome books I’ve ever read), I knew that I would do these characters a disservice by making their lives easy. Everyone dies, after all—but not everyone dies well.

  Danica and her band of mercenaries grew out of my love of Howard Tayler’s Schlock Mercenary. The first attempt failed horribly, so I consulted with some military friends to figure out exactly how the mercenary unit would be organized. I then wrote up a few short paragraphs describing who they are and what are their back-stories. These are just a few:

  Danica Nova

  Age: 36

  Danica is from the Tajjur system. She was the daughter of an admiral in the Tajjur navy. In the war for independence, her father was captured and tortured for information. Danica left to try and rescue him, but had barely embarked when a gang of thugs hired by the Imperial occupation killed her mother, younger brother, and many of her extended family. Ever since then, she has been tortured with the thought that perhaps, if she had stayed with her family, she could have protected them. She knows that she would have died along with them, but she still feels like she abandoned them.

  With the imperials out for her head, she took one of the family ships and ran to the Belarius system, which had a thriving underworld. She joined up with a Belarian militia for a while, then broke off to start a private military group. She did this out of a warped hunger for revenge, to become a thorn in the side of the Gaian Imperial Navy. She wanted to develop a mercenary force so that when the empire finally fell, she would be in a prime position to join with the forces bringing them down.

  This was her original idea, her dream since childhood. However, as the years passed by and the reality of mercenary life set in, more and more she has contented herself with odd jobs and simply looking out for the next paycheck.

  Danica has natural leadership qualities. She knows everyone on her ship personally, including all of the enlisted, and commands their respect with her unyielding sense of justice and her equal treatment of everyone under her command, including herself. Her primary concern is the safety and welfare of her crew, and they know this. At the same time, however, she has many buried feelings from her troubled past than many of them do not understand.

  Because of her past life among Tajjur's elite, Danica is surprisingly well educated and has an extensive grasp of history and an appreciation of culture.

  Roman Krikoryan

  Age: 52

  Roman is the son of a working class Tajjur family. His father was an alcoholic factory worker, and his mother had seven or eight children to take care of. Roman was the middle child, and didn't have much of a future except in the planetside factories, so he enlisted with the Gaian Imperial navy.

  He saw action in several frontier worlds struggling to gain their autonomy. During this time, he gained considerable military experience and moved up the enlisted ranks. He also came to see how weak and corrupt the empire was.

  When Tajjur declared its independence, he led a mutiny on his ship (which employed a 60% Tajjuri crew) and defected to the Tajjur navy. He was made sergeant major and went on to fight the imperial forces in that brutal war.

  The Tajjur war for independence left him lost and disillusioned. Many of his friends lost their lives, and he found himself fighting directly against many of his friends from the imperial navy. When the war finally ended, he was still alive but had lost everything, including his dignity. Considered a traitor by the imperials and hunted by the occupation forces, he fled to Belarius.

  He drifted for a while, working odd jobs on the spaceports in that system and spending his money on booze. Eventually, however, he met up with Danica, who saw something in him. She offered to take him on to her crew if he sobered up, and he accepted. He was one of her first recruits in the mercenary unit, and so became a key advising officer from the very beginning.

  As chief petty officer of the Tajji Flame, Roman is the key military advisor, the link between the enlisted men and the officers, and the backbone of the organization. He's seen it all, and he knows how to get things done.

  Anya Sikorsky

  Age: 26

  Anya is from the Belarius system, from a local merchanter family much like the Mccoys. She apprenticed as a pilot and regularly made runs to Tajjur and Karduna.

  When she was eighteen, she was kidnapped by pirates in the outer rim of the Belarius system. The pirates held her ransom but killed off the rest of the crew of the merchanter ship, which consisted of an old man and his son with whom Anya had a relationship. Anya escaped, only to be captured again and severely abused by the crew. Shortly after, her parents paid the ransom and she was released.

  The experience traumatized her, but it also hardened her and she determined to get revenge. Having stolen some information on the pirates' ships while in captivity, she found out where the pirates usually went to port. With this information, she ran away from home, changed her identity and appearance, bought some firearms on the black market, hunted down the pirates while they were in port and killed them all. She then hijacked their ship and flew it back home.

  This proved to be a mistake, however, because the pirates were actually underlings in a much larger crime organization. When their boss found out what had been done, he tracked her down and sent out a team of thugs to kill her family. Anya narrowly escaped all of this.

  With the pirates hunting her down, she fled to the starlane stations just outside the Auriga Nova system, where the imperial forces had generally stopped most pirating. She found it difficult to settle down, however, with little future and no connections.

  She drifted for a while, then hired on as a pilot to a local freight company. This gave her the time to get over, at least somewhat, the loss of her family. She soon became involved in a relationship with one of the younger freighter navigators, Alex Goldsteyn. He promised to protect her, and while she was with him she finally started to get over the nightmares that had haunted her ever since the death of her family. He also helped her complete her training, making her into a first-rate astrogator.

  However, soon after completing her training, a band of pirates attacked their freighter. Alex helped Anya to escape, but he was killed in the process. The event further traumatized her, especialy the loss of her lover, but she came out of it with a renewed determination to make herself strong so something like this wouldn't happen again.

  She returned to Auriga Nova, but this time decided to sign up with a mercenary crew where she could learn to be a fighter. Danica came through right about this time just after hiring Ilya, and Anya offered to sign up. She almost didn't get the job, but when Roman heard about her past fighting the pirates, he decided she was the right material.

  Soon after she was hired on, she got involved in a relationship with Ilya. This relationship has been ongoing for some time, though it's really more of an “I need somebody and you're available” kind of thing with relatively little commitment. Danica tolerates it, but only just.

  Despite her hard past, Anya has a naturally warm, nurturing personality. She likes to stand up for the little guy, and doesn't like to see other people suffer (unless, of course, they are her enemies). She li
kes the way Ilya talks tough and doesn't let others put him down. She doesn't know that he's a coward at heart.

  Ilya Ayvazyan

  Age: 22

  Ilya grew up as a delinquent on a Tajji moon under the imperial occupation of his home system. He has a natural knack for mathematics and computers, and soon learned that he could make more hacking into networks that doing petty street stuff.

  He moved up in the local gangs, but a series of gang wars and brutal imperial sting operations forced him to flee. He stowed away on a freighter bound for the Auriga Nova system.

  The freighter was captured by pirates, but Danica's band of mercenaries attacked the pirates, per their contract with the owners of the freight company. Ilya snuck onto the pirate network and hacked into their drone fighters, deactivating a wing in mid-combat. As a result, Danica crushed the pirates and soon liberated the ship. Ilya told Danica what he'd done and asked her for a job; she accepted, having discovered that the higher paying work requires at least one cyber-ops officer.

  This was about two and a half years before Danica met up with James. Tajjur fell to the Hameji a little less than two years later.

  Ilya has little military experience and a natural disdain for authority. He thinks very highly of himself and likes to push people's buttons. Because of his young age, most of the senior members of the crew tolerate him the way they'd tolerate an annoying puppy, or perhaps a cat. Ilya doesn't let this bother him, or stop him from doing exactly what he wants.

  Despite the airs he puts on, Ilya is a coward at heart.

  It’s amazing how much the story comes alive when you truly get to know your characters.

  Bringing Stella Home went through multiple drafts and several test readers, all of whom (I think) are listed in the acknowledgments. My military friends were especially helpful; I’ve never served in the military and couldn’t even pretend to write military science fiction, so their feedback proved invaluable.

  In the fall of 2010 when the manuscript got to a publishable state, I decided to hold off submitting it until World Fantasy Convention in Columbus. The convention was awesome, and while I garnered a little bit of interest from agents, I made several new writer friends who expressed interest in reading it. Their feedback convinced me to go back for one last revision, and while I was working on that, the ebook revolution really began to take off. I read Konrath’s “You Should Self-Publish” post on his blog, and was thoroughly stunned; here was advice that ran against everything I’d ever heard, and yet it completely made sense. I discovered Dean Wesley Smith and Kristine Katherine Rusch around this time—two long-time writers with careers like the one I hope to have someday. The more I learned about the changes in the publishing industry, the more I realized that Bringing Stella Home would probably find its audience better as a self-published ebook than a traditionally published novel. The severe dearth of classic space opera and space adventure at World Fantasy 2010 (with the notable exception of Night Shade Books) hammered this home to me as well.

  In spite of the short-lived depression the first draft put me through, writing this novel has been a true joy. I hope some of that passion was shared as you read it. If you enjoyed it, the best, most awesome thing you could do is share it, blog about it, tell a friend, post a review or tag it on Amazon—every little bit helps. The thing about indie publishing is that it’s all about the readers, which is exactly as it should be.

  As of right now (October 2011), I have finished the first draft of the sequel to this novel. It needs a ton of work, including a new title, so it probably won’t be available until 2012 or so, but it’s pretty awesome. It takes place five years after the events of Bringing Stella Home, and includes James, Lars, a couple of love interests, and another showdown with the Hameji. So stay tuned for when that book comes out!

  If you want to find me on teh internets, the best place to start is probably my blog, One Thousand and One Parsecs (onelowerlight.com/writing). There, you can sign up for my email list, where I do periodic giveaways and share news about my latest releases. I’m also on Twitter (@onelowerlight) as well. As new releases come out, I’ll definitely be posting them there. My goal is to publish a minimum of two novels per year, and I have a ton of ideas for stories in the Gaia Nova universe, so expect to see some of these characters again!

  In closing, I just want to say thank you for reading this book! Without you, stories like this one wouldn’t come alive; they’d just be sitting in a hard drive, or taking up space in a cardboard box somewhere. My dream is to make a living telling stories that I love, and I couldn’t do that without readers like you. So thanks again, and I hope to see you soon!

  Acknowledgments

  I got a lot of feedback with this novel, and every little bit helped. First, I would like to thank Brandon Sanderson for teaching his excellent writing class at BYU, English 318R. Next, I’d like to thank my writing group from that class: Stephen Haskin, Sarah Ray, Max Florschutz, and Nathan Waitman. I’d also like to thank my first round of test readers: Charlie Holmberg, Jason Housely, Officer Joel Frary, Ben Hardin, Julie Black, Stephen Dethloff, and Kindal Debenhaum…yes, even you, Kindal. Thanks also to my second round of test readers: Mykle Law, Peter Johnston, Jenna Kimble, Craig Roddin, Liel Boyce, and Lieutenant David Kerman. Finally, I would like to thank C.A. Jacobs (aka “minion”) for her help with the last revision, Kindal’s writing group (Emily Debenhaum, Andy Lemmon, Aneeka Richins, Ben Hardin, Megan Hutchins) for help with a couple of scenes, Dan Wells for his amazing 7-point plotting system, Josh Leavitt for his copy editing services, Lorenz Hideyoshi Ruwwe for the excellent cover art, and Scott Bascom for the help with the teaser. Thanks so much, guys! This book would not be nearly as great without you.

  The saga of Gaia Nova continues in Heart of the Nebula!

  THEY LOST THE WAR, BUT THE PEACE IS STILL WITHIN THEIR GRASP.

  Five years have passed since the Hameji conquered James McCoy's homeworld, all but enslaving his people. Now, the occupation threatens to destroy them.

  Deep in the heart of the Good Hope nebula, there is a place where they can start over. But it will take a strong leader to get them there, and the temptation to trade freedom for security has never been greater. Even if they manage to escape from the Hameji, the greatest threat to their future may come from within.

  James once gave everything to save the ones he loved. This time, his sacrifice could make him a legend.

  CLICK HERE TO BUY HEART OF THE NEBULA

  A science fiction romance from the author of Bringing Stella Home.

  A TALE FROM THE FRINGES OF AN INTERSTELLAR EMPIRE THAT HAS FORGOTTEN ITS HOLIEST LEGEND: THE STORY OF EARTH.

  He was the sole heir to the Najmi camp, a young man raised by tribesmen after falling to the desert from his home among the stars. She was the sheikh's most beautiful daughter, promised his hand in marriage—if she can convince him to stay.

  Together, they must travel to a land where glass covers the sky and men traverse the stars as easily as tribesmen cross the desert. Here, at the ancient temple dedicated to the memory of Earth, they hope to find the answers that will show them the way home.

  But when love and honor clash, how can they face their destiny when it threatens to tear them apart?

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  The saga of Gaia Nova continues in Stars of Blood and Glory!

  THE ONLY HOPE FOR THE LAST FREE STARS NOW LIES ON THE PATH OF BLOOD AND GLORY.

  The princess of Shinihon could not have picked a worse time to run away. The largest Hameji battle fleet ever gathered threatens to overrun the last of the free stars. To make matters worse, a rogue assassin from an unknown faction has killed the high admiral of the Federation. Without clear leadership, the war may be lost before she can be found.

  But Danica Nova and her band of Tajji mercenaries are no strangers to lost causes. They've fought the Hameji before, and they'll fight them again—not for honor, or for glory, but simply for the pay. War has been their way of life ever since th
e diaspora from the homeworld.

  Master Sergeant Roman Krikoryan is one of the few remaining mercenaries still old enough to remember the homeworld. But he's an old cyborg, and his humanity is fading. Death is a mercy he doesn't expect to find on this mission.

  They aren't the only ones after the princess, however. Hungry for glory and eager to make a name for himself, Sholpan's son Abaqa seeks to make the girl his slave. Though only a boy, he'll stop at nothing to prove himself to his Hameji brethren.

  With the Federation in disarray, the bloody end of the war may come too soon for some of them. But one thing is certain—not all of them will live to see it.

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