So I have a new series coming out in January 2021. The Lazarus Alliance.
Those seven covers us from January through July, and I already have other things coming out after that as well as during (non-SF drops in the spring, as it were).
This is a new universe, unconnected to anything else I have as yet written. Partly, that was a subconscious response to the Alexandria Station Universe. There are no true aliens in Alexandria Station. Other than Humans, the Sentients are the only creatures you will ever encounter.
I felt the need to dabble with aliens. In fact, at the time, I was making a list of every sort of mechanism of ground locomotion I could think of (since expanded), and then created species around them, including old testament angels from Ezekiel 1:16.
But the story really starts in a bizarre place for me.
Usually, I open a new word file and start piling in notes after inspiration hits. Build up the world, the setting, the math, the science. Then I move on to the people, adding heroes and villains as needed.
That did not happen with Lazarus. In fact, I was laying in the tub soaking and meditating one night, like I do, when the image hit, followed by the words. It would not let me go.
So I got up, dried off, and got dressed. Opened a new file on the computer and literally started typing. The first chapter of Escape as you will read it is not much changed from what flowed out of my brain that night. I didn’t even have a character, just an unstoppable need to write.
So I wrote.
It was only after a few days when I caught up with myself and realized that I had a book one of a new series.
A captain who is supposed to go down with his ship. Flying an experimental warship whose secrets must remain hidden lest the enemy get hold of them and figure out what he had done. Ambushed and afire, he orders everyone to abandon and plots a course into a nebula that he expects to kill him and destroy his ship.
Hell of a way to die, but necessary. That term comes up a lot in the series. Necessary. We do things because they are necessary, not because we want to. Because we cannot avoid the responsibility that comes with the uniform and the oath.
From there, I jumped back to aliens and tried to figure out what happened to my guy. Mind you, he still doesn’t have a name, but has survived what was supposed to be suicide. That’s when the name Lazarus of Bethany popped out of my backbrain. Jesus brought him back from the dead in John.
From Wikipedia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lazarus_of_Bethany):
The biblical narrative of the raising of Lazarus is found in chapter 11 of the Gospel of John. A certain Eleazer (whence Lazarus) is introduced as a follower of Jesus who lives in the town of Bethany near Jerusalem. He is identified as the brother of the sisters Mary and Martha. The sisters send word to Jesus that Lazarus, “he whom thou lovest,” is ill. Instead of immediately traveling to Bethany, according to the narrator, Jesus intentionally remains where he is for two more days before beginning the journey.
When Jesus arrives in Bethany, he finds that Lazarus is dead and has already been in his tomb for four days. He meets first with Martha and Mary in turn. Martha laments that Jesus did not arrive soon enough to heal her brother and Jesus replies with the well-known statement, “I am the resurrection, and the life: he that believeth in me, though he were dead, yet shall he live: And whosoever liveth and believeth in me shall never die“. Later the narrator here gives the famous simple phrase, “Jesus wept.”
This is a man who sees himself saved, and decides that there must be a reason. He must find out what happened, and solve it, so this is also something of a mystery.
From there, aliens.
A friend of mine has the opinion that the reason aliens have never visited us on earth is that we are big, violent, and insane creatures that should not be let loose on the galaxy. I do no disagree with him.
Face it, we’re space orcs, when most people expect pretty space elves out there watching us in utter horror, and probably placing bets on when and how we manage to kill ourselves.
Thus, Lazarus sees himself as an orc, and the people he finds do as well, because humans are taller, heavier, stronger, and more violent than any of the species that they know. And I had fun creating the people who will rescue Lazarus. They must be smaller and weaker. Must be more casual and less prone to violence.
For fun, I made them smugglers and now I have evil overlords to deal with, in addition to spies and enemies. Eventually, it turns into a war with five sides, which are always ugly, messy things.
By the time I was done with book one (Escape), I knew the overall arc of the series. There were only supposed to be six, but book six (since renamed Retribution) had so much ground to cover that I just gave up and chopped the story in half instead and beefed it up more than I might have otherwise.
Each of them runs from sixty to about seventy-five thousand words, with the whole arc running about four hundred thousand combined, just thumbnailing it from here. Not sure there will be other stories. I mean, as always I left it open ended but this one is truly Space Opera, so we’re shaking the pillars of Heaven by the time we end Alliance, and I’d have to go somewhere else if I wrote an eight.
But I had a lot of fun writing this. Hopefully, you’ll have a lot of fun reading them.
And stay tuned for all the other stuff I’m pulling out of the trunk in the spring and summer.
Blaze
West of the Mountains, WA