The post amble
Where I interpret the cards
I hope you enjoyed A Lone Star on the Lady Liberty. (Have I mentioned before how much I’m kicking myself for setting up a pattern of long titles for this series?)
This story came out of the card challenge — where us Armchair Alien authors drew random cards from Jeannette’s box o’ cards that we’d each use to write a story.
As I mentioned in the intro post, I used the opportunity to procrastinate on editing book 3 of The Lyra Cycle series to write a story in the same universe using a side character from book 2 named Echo Eris.
The first card that stood out was obviously “A bank robbery doesn’t go ask expected”. This became the foundation of the entire story … though I admit I mostly left the bank out.
Next, my eyes landed on the ship: to me, this was clearly a luxury liner jettisoning escape pods … but why? Why would the hoi polloi of the galaxy willingly leave their richly appointed suites and sparkling galas? Well, you have to read the story to find out.
I named the ship the Lady Liberty based on the card with the Statue of Liberty being attack by some snake-like creature. You can’t see it here, but the backside has a creature more Godzilla in appearance, which inspired another … character? Would you call a giant iguana a character?
Next up is the Skeleton Horde, with its terrifying warriors of the glowing eyes. I actually interpreted that rather literally. Okay, my Horde is not exactly reanimated bones but close enough. This new faction has now gone into series bible so they might need to come back at some point.
Finally, there’s the card with the black birds. I miscounted at first (and ignored the VII at the top). I saw six crows, so I decided I’d include a group thieves called the Six of Crows…. As I was writing away, I kept thinking ‘this sounds really familiar’. Thanks, Leigh Bardugo. I haven’t read her book called The Six of Crows yet, but when I googled, thinking maybe it’s okay as long as her crows aren’t thieves, well, I ended up having to change that a bit even if her crows aren’t spacefaring thieves.
This story also introduced Laramy Singe, who wasn’t inspired by the cards at all, but as often happens, I feel in love with a character — they may need to be the hero in their own story in the future. And I definitely need to bring back the space iguana.
But first book 3 in The Lyra Cycle.
If you enjoyed this story and want to read more in the world, you can pick up book 1 from our shop (use SUBSCRIBE25 to get 25% off) or your favourite online bookstores.
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