Cover image for my novel “A Wobblegong and His Boy”

Today’s the day when my boy’s adventure science fiction novel A Boy And His Wobblegong goes on Pre-Order. Just click on the link and on the Amazon page, pre-order my novel for delivery to your Kindle device on Friday, March 20th.

I’m incredibly excited about this one. This will be my second published novel which I hope will lead to other, larger works and successes.

Here’s just a taste of what you have to look forward to:

Remmie McNeal woke up late. He didn’t know it at first. He was ten years old when he went into hibernation along with six thousand other colonists on the sleeper ship orbiting Mars. He was still ten years old several hundred years later when the ship achieved orbit around their destination planet Acaris 851-D. He was ten years old four months after that when the sleeping colonists were transferred by automated systems into Satu Colony’s underground facility and programmed to undergo genetic reconstruction for the next seventy-five days.

But after those seventy-five days, Remmie McNeal still didn’t wake up for another fifty-two and he wasn’t the only one.

He didn’t remember crawling out of the reconstruction creche. He was lying on his stomach and his cheek was pressed against a cool, flat surface. He was shivering but his face was covered with sweat.

“Mom?” Remmie’s single word sounded lonely. His ears were ringing but that’s all he could hear except for the low moan of the air recyclers. No, that wasn’t true. He also heard someone crying.

Remmie tried to sit up but his body wouldn’t cooperate. He opened his eyes and saw dust motes scurrying across the dark gray floor, sent into motion by ventilated air. He took a breath. It smelled antiseptic and musty at the same time.

He still heard someone crying.

Remmie was sitting up now. His back was resting against the hard plastic shell of his creche. His parents and older sisters must still be recovering in the cradles next to his. His throat burned and his mouth tasted bad.

“My Mommy and Daddy won’t wake up.”

“Clara?”

Remmie looked left and saw five-year-old Clara Ito standing just a few feet away. She was dressed in a thin, white smock that hung down to her knees. A yellow and orange giraffe plushie dangled from her right hand. Tears described tiny rivers down her cheeks. She had peed her clothes.

“Can you wake them up for me, Remmie?”

The vast reconstruction hall slowly came into focus. It wasn’t right. The red emergency lights were flashing far overhead, competing with the harsh white tubes against the industrial metal ceiling.

Remmie, his Mom, Dad, and his two older sisters Ali and Sky were part of the group sent to establish the Satu Colony near the shore of the North Dubbo Sea on Acaris’ biggest continent. It wasn’t much bigger than Australia, but it was all brand new.

There were seven different corporations competing to colonize different parts of Acaris which, so far, was the only world where human beings could be genetically adapted to the biosphere. Daedalus-Star was financing the Satu Project. They were one of the first to put “boots on the ground” and on top of that, Satu was going to be the biggest single human habitat built outside Earth’s Solar System.

A bunch of robotic systems had already been sent ahead to build and configure the reconstruction underground beneath what would become Satu. After the ship settled into orbit, their hibernation creches were to be relocated into one of four large cells or “quads” in the underground. Then, the controlling AI SADI would physically rebuild everyone using synthetic DNA so their biology conformed to the planetary environment. It was a lot faster and easier than terraforming the whole planet which was only sort of “Earth-like.”

After all that, they’d just wake up.

Remmie remembered the briefing where one of the Reconstruction Crew (he thought it was Alex Whitner) said they’d feel kind of woozy and pukey at first. But there were supposed to be plenty of robs to get them up and around.

“Remmie, Clara, may I be of assistance?”

The rob’s voice sounded like it was coming from the far end of a long tunnel. Remmie was still staring at the softly sobbing Clara. Her dark hair was cut to her neckline in the back. Black bangs clung wet to her forehead. Her eyes were large and cocoa brown.

“What?” said Remmie.

He turned to the right and looked up. The rob was a humanoid model, which just meant it had…

What happens next. Pre-order my novel on Amazon now and find out on March 20th.