The Gathering Edge
Sharon Lee and Steve Miller
©2016 by Sharon Lee and Steve Miller

Prologue
Orbital Aid 370

“Move.”

The radioed message from Stost was clear, while sound from outside their suits was muddied and muffled. There was still atmosphere here, for what that was worth. There were also odd vibrations, and strange sounds too, here in the crew quarter zone, the most worrisome being a continuous scratch-scratch-scratch. It was best, Chernak assured herself, not to think too closely on it. After all, they were just passing through.

There was another sound — familiar, even companionable — the sound of breathing not her own, coming through her headset. She concentrated on that, even as she observed the passage they moved down, alert for threats, for traps, for —

The way ahead was b...

The Gathering Edge, the twentieth novel-length Adventure in the Liaden Universe®, and! the direct sequel to Dragon Ship, which makes it the fifth book in the Theo Waitley arc —

Is now available as an eArc, directly from Baen.

Here’s your link

Asyouknowbob, The Gathering Edge, twentieth novel in the Liaden Universe®, Sharon Lee and Steve Miller, owner-operators, will be released in hardcover on May 2.  Naturally, we’re very excited (it’s not true what they tell you that, when you’re an Old and Sober Author you won’t get excited when a new book comes out).  In fact, we’re so excited, we want to share some of that energy around.

So! We’re inviting you all — yes, you, too! — to a pre-release party A(sk) M(e) A(nything) on Reddit, Monday, May 1, at 12 noon Eastern.

You don’t need a Reddit account to hang out and read the questions and answers, but you will need an account if you want to participate in the AMA.  If you want to get an account now, just, yanno, in case, just go here; it doesn’t cost a thing and it’s quick and easy ...

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...

Local Custom and Scout’s Progress came out at the same time, in the same book — a book with yet a third title — Pilots Choice. The year was 2001 and Meisha Merlin’s publisher, Stephe Pagel, had decided that in order to keep Liaden Universe® publishing momentum going putting both novels in the same hardback would be the best way to satisfy the market. Scout’s Progress went on to win the Prism Award for Futuristic fiction, but only by a hair, over … Local Custom, which came in an extremely strong second. There’s more than a hint of romance, and more than a hint of the Georgette Heyer style regency, in both books.

Looking for a science fiction story with danger, wit, and romance? Here you go, have a sample!

Local Custom
by Sharon Lee and Steve Miller

Chapter One

Each person shall provide ...

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 ...