Today is the official release day of the hardcover and ebook editions of Salvage Right, the newest Liaden Universe® novel, by Sharon Lee and Steve Miller.

Below, for your reading pleasure, is a letter we wrote to accompany the eARC sent by Baen to industry professionals, which kind of puts Salvage Right into perspective, in our career, and explains why we’re quite so excited about this release.

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Dear Readers,

We hope that 2023 has so far treated you well, and that as it continues to unroll, you will have many opportunities to share happiness, and to celebrate.

We’re writing because we have something to celebrate.

In July, Salvage Right, our one hundredth collaboration, also the twenty-fifth novel set in our original Liaden Universe® will be published. This is kind of a big deal for us, given that, after the publication of our third book, in 1989, our editor at the time told us that we had “no career,” going forward.

However, our current publisher, Baen Books, thinks that one hundred collaborations is a reason to celebrate.

When we first started out, intending to write seven novels, we made a solemn and serious agreement: If this thing we’re doing stops being fun, we’ll quit.

Thirty-five years, twenty-nine collaborative novels, and great sweeping swathes of shorter works, clearly, Lee and Miller have been having fun.

A little about Salvage Right – it is a space opera in the Lee-and-Miller style, which is Action! Adventure! Romance! Salvage Right comes complete with malevolent intelligences from a former universe, mad scientists, extended family, AIs, secret organizations bent on taking over everything, snarky dialog, and a morally gray group of unlikely heroes, who have come together to make the universe a better place, though none of them would exactly say that, if you asked them.

Although twenty-four books set in the Liaden Universe® have been published prior to this one, it is not a strict, in-line series that must be read in order. It’s a universe in which a large cast of characters interact as they see fit, and have adventures.

In many ways, Salvage Right is the quintessential Liaden Universe® novel. It was, first, a brainstorm – not the book we had been supposed to be writing at all (we’re writing that one now). Secondly, the characters took over at a very early stage. They were going to Tinsori Light, and it was going to be the party of the decade.

We do know better than to argue with our characters, so we let them have their head, and they did have a most wonderful party, which we were delighted to chronicle.

And here it is, for you. We hope you have as much fun reading it as we did, writing it.

Thank you for reading.

Sharon Lee and Steve Miller
The Cat Farm and Confusion Factory
February 2023

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