So, there’s a new thing we’re taking part in, called First Chapter Friday, in which authors post the first chapter of one of their novels in a Clever Plot to get readers interested enough to buy the rest of the book.

Steve and I decided to post the first chapter of Fledgling as our first First Chapter Friday offering, for two reasons.

Reason ONE: If a reader is sufficiently captivated by this chapter and wishes to go on, they may do so immediately (so long as they don’t mind reading an ebook), and for free, by going to Amazon, or Baen eBooks, or any other of the Usual Suspects, and downloading it for free.  As in, for free.

Reason TWO:  Fledgling is the first book in the Theo Waitley story arc contained within the Liaden Universe®.  That means, if a reader likes Fledgling and wants to ...

It’s Friday again, and you know what that means, right?  Right!  Time for another free first chapter to whet your appetite for more.  This week, we decided to bring you the first chapter — the very first chapter EVER, written in 1984, for the book titled Agent of Change, published in 1988 by Del Rey, as a paperback original

Once again — if you like this chapter and want to know what happens next, the whole book is available for free from the Baen Free Library, from Amazon, Kobo and the rest of the Usual Suspects.

If you like Agent, you have many more books ahead of you.  Here’s a list to get you started.

Excerpt from Agent of Change, © Sharon Lee and Steve Miller, 1988

Chapter One
Standard Year 1392

THE MAN WHO was not Terrence O’Grady had come quietly.

And that, Sam insisted, was ...

Full disclosure:  Crystal Soldier is not the first book in the Liaden Universe®, mostly because, err, it takes place in a Whole ‘Nother Universe — a universe that is not only at war, but is losing the war.

It is the first book of a duology (the second book, despite Sharon’s insistence that she would not, no never, title a book Crystal Dragon, is — Crystal Dragon), which can be read independent of the Liaden Universe® novels.

Soldier was published in 2004 by Meisha Merlin, as a single title; Baen returned it to print as part of the omnibus edition The Crystal Variation, including Crystal Soldier, Crystal Dragon, and Balance of Trade, available everywhere.  Or it can be purchased as an ebook from Baen ebooks, and Amazon.

A detail we have neglected to mention in our previous First Chapter...

So, cast your mind back — ‘way back to the last decade of the 20th century, by which I mean late 1992 and continuing into late-ish 1993.  Our third novel, Carpe Diem, had been published in October 1989, and Del Rey had cut us lose for having “disappointing sales,” which was Del Rey’s Thing back in the day, though we didn’t have the internet then, so nobody really knew it until years later, when many hearts and careers had already been broken.  I believe that we were still trying to get the rights to Carpe Diem back (that also used to be A Thing, that publishers would revert books back to the author).

Anyhow, we’d pretty much given up on the whole writing thing.  Which is to say that we still wrote, but we hardly bothered sending stuff out anymore, since the rejection letters we received...

The end of the last century was a pretty good time for the Lee & Miller writing team. We had Liaden books on the way, we were being courted by anthologies, our story A Matter of Dreams was set for an illustrated guest appearance in Colleen Doran’s A Distant Soil (#27) and we were back in the groove of going to conventions. Our chapbooks were doing well… and then Absolute Magnitude’s editor Warren Lapine asked us for a story — specifically, a Liaden story.

That story happened to be the story of a crew member just coming to his majority on a small-time tradeship, one Jethri Gobelyn. Jethri had been bouncing and waving his hands and around in the character queue for awhile and we figured that once his story was told, he’d let us get back to the main line of things.  But the appearance of Bal...

After a book or two Sharon and I were surprised that we we’re getting noticed even if our books were coming out as original paperbacks rather than starting in the hardcover lists as we do now.It was fun, if not enriching, to see things like this in print:

“Val Con and Miri are the most romantic couple in SF!”
—Susan Krinard, author of Touch of the Wolf

“You may never care about a cast of characters more or await their return with more anticipation.”
—SF Site

“Full of action, exotic characters, plenty of plot, and even a touch of romance. OUTSTANDING.”
—Booklist

As much fun as it was to see nice things written about our books, it was even more fun to write them. There’s a lot of playfulness in Carpe Diem, some in the repartee, some in the naming of places,  some in the challenging of ...