Background, background, and more background

Honor & Duty: Origins 1

Back when I first published Vengeance from Ashes, I had requests to consider doing a prequel, even if only a short story, about the Arterus mission that led to Ashlyn Shaw and some of her Marines being court-martialed and sentenced to the penal colony on Tarsus. That one mission and the machinations behind what happened were the starting point for the series, the motivation behind not only Ash but others, some who supported her and others who really wished she’d died there.

That story is still sitting in the back of my mind, mainly because every time I’ve sat down to write it, it’s become something much more than a short story. I really don’t want to do a novel on the events. So I’ve been letting it percolate and the plan right now is to release it here on Substack around the first of the year.

Fingers crossed.

As I said the other day, the next project up is a prequel novel set in the H&D universe. We’re going back a number of generations to the story of Evangeline Cordova, the many-times great-grandmother who not only started the family on its dedication to serve Fuercon but whose dog tag one member of each generation wear with their own. Evangeline set the example for Ashlyn’s maternal line, proving the importance of Honor, Duty, Family.

The project has created some new challenges. I’m comfortable with the Fuercon of Vengeance from Ashes and the other titles. But the Fuercon in Origins is something very different. This is a planet that hasn’t been settled for all that long. Much of the planet is still wilderness or rural settlements of farms and ranches. It doesn’t have a strong military and system defenses are minimal. Danger comes from natural predators, native to the planet and from outside forces.

Then there’s the fact the tech isn’t as advanced as we have in the original novels. There aren’t implants to augment someone’s abilities. If help responds to an SOS, it takes longer to get there. Then there are the aliens, new ones not mentioned in the original titles. (Which begs the question of why and how do I deal with them without screwing up the timeline and plots of the books already published?)

It’s been a mix of fun and anguish as I’ve put together the very rough draft. Not only do I have to be careful not to make Evangeline into another version of Ash, but the Evangeline we first meet is not quite as old as Ash was at the beginning of Battle Flight.

So that’s what I’ll be working on for the next month or two. I don’t have a cover yet, not really. But I pulled together a mock-up to be inspiration as I finish the final draft and look for the right image elements for the final cover.

So, for now, I’m biting my nails as I wait for the reviews of Witchstorm Rising to come in and, at the same time, letting my imagination fly as I turn my full attention to H&D: Origins. Oh, and I need to figure out a title for the book since H&D: Origins is the series (ok, sub-series) title.

Until later!

(BTW, just to make sure it’s clear. The featured image was created by me using Midjourney AI. It is for my inspiration board and will not be the cover of the book.)