It was bound to happen eventually.

Kathy sent me an email recently, which is the genises of this PSA. This week:

• My brain!
• The Empire’s Rogues.

Let’s start with the thoughts-and-prayers segment.

I know the emoji in the subject is an explosion…

…not an implosion. Turns out, there’s not a decent emoji for that, and I prefer the idea of imploding, so here we are: me vs. the Unicode Consortium. Let’s move on, and talk about Kathy’s email. In it, she said (note to others: this is how you tell authors they’re stupid, all while doing it politely):

"Grace's timeline no longer makes sense to me."

I’ll admit to a small feeling of dread on reading this. As I noted in a recent rant, the Ezeroc Wars universe is epic. There are 7 novels, 5 novellas, 6 short stories, and 3 mid-range books (…coming soon). The infographic is weighty (which reminds me, I need to update this for the Empire’s Rogues… always one more thing, amirite?).

Kathy emailed me, and it turns out I made a colossal cock-up. In Tyche’s Grace, our heroine leaves the story at age 18. In Dragon’s Run (the start of her spacefaring adventures), she’s (gah!) 15.

There are usually two reasons readers trip up:

1. I leave things vague for Writer Reasons™, or
2. I made a mistake.

This is the latter. The good news is, in this world of easily updatable ebooks, I can change Tyche’s Grace or Dragon’s Run (…and the other two of her shorts, by association) to remedy. I’ve got three choices.

• Leave it as is, and assume since no one but Kathy picked up on this, few others will. This irks my CDO. Also, Grace would get pissed off at me, and she has a sword.
• Make her younger at the end of Tyche’s Grace — to match the 15 years she is at the start of Dragon’s Run. This is the easiest fix, but might have implications for how people view her and her skills in Tyche’s Grace. Related to this fix is to muddle the ages a whisker in both stories — make her leave Earth at 16, and start Run at the same age.
• Apply fast-aging cream (this will never be a real product) and make her much older in Dragon’s Run, to match her left-Earth age. The problem here is it misses some of the fun of a younger Grace on Starfire station, and would be beyond question the most difficult to pull off as tonally it wouldn’t fit her space station adventures.

I’m leaning toward the second option — adjust Tyche’s Grace — but I’d be interested in your thoughts. Mistakes happen, but how we fix them can really yield spectacular depths of error.

The Empire’s Rogues

Those of you on KU have been galloping through the six stories as they released. We’re now at the point where the anthology’s ready for those with great impulse control.

The Empire’s Rogues collects all six of the shorts featuring the younger Nate and Grace. I really enjoyed writing these. I’d wanted to try my hand at “Young Adult” fiction, but found the whole process of writing about people with a little more innocence a treat.

We watch our heroes grow into what they were meant to be. Those of you with teenage children will consider this to easily be the best pack of lies I’ve written yet. Bookshine and Rainbows left a lovely review despite all my falsehoods.

Nathan Chevell and Grace Gushiken are criminals.

That’s all they have in common. Nate ducks the law in Ganymede’s pirate port, and Grace runs from the Empire’s justice to Starfire Station. They face super soldiers, crime lords, bioweapons, cartels, and betrayal. They make friends you’ll love and enemies you’ll hate.

This book collects The Empire’s Rogues I-VI:

1. Ganymede Steel
2. Dragon’s Run
3. Ganymede Plunder
4. Dragon’s Bargain
5. Ganymede Plague
6. Dragon’s Rescue

If you love blaster and sword fights, adventure, and great dialogue, check out the Empire’s Rogues today!

[Gimme the Empire’s Rogues Volume 1]

That’s it from me. I’d love to hear your thoughts on how to unfuck the Grace timeline problem. Regardless of your views on that, have your best week of the year. The universe thinks you deserve it.

R