I've spent several years and hundreds
of hours and no doubt banged out half a million words writing The
Bright Black Sea, so I'll let it tell its own tale. I will,
however, give you a short introduction, without delving too deeply
into the details of the plot or the characters.
First, as usual with me, the story is
told as a first person narrative – the way we live our lives. The
narrator, Wil Litang, is the newly appointed captain of the Lost
Star, an interplanetary tramp freighter. He was the ship's first
mate and when the captain/co-owner took gravely ill, he was appointed
acting captain, charged with taking the ship on its usual round the
planetary belt of Azminn, one of the stars of the Nine Star Nebula.
However, before he completes this six month journey, not only does
his captain die, but the other co-owner does as well, leaving the
ship in charge of the Ministry of Probate of the planet of Calissant,
pending it's final disposition to the heirs. Plus, in the course of
the Lost Star's circumnavigation of Azminn, interplanetary
trade takes one of its periodic nose dives, so that by the end of the
voyage cargoes very hard to find, and the Ministry of Probate is
laying up the tramp ships under its control as they arrive back in
Calissant.
But facing this uncertain future is not
the only thing Litang finds he must deal with. The late owners of the
Lost Star had a rather shadowy past. They were known for their
barely believable tales of pirates, battles, revolutions, and
desperate escapes which they claimed to have survived in their
younger days. Now it seems that this dangerous past may well have
caught up with them and Litang's Lost Star as well.
Though Litang would like nothing better
than to circle Azminn twice a year hauling containers around the sun,
between the economic slump and the mysterious dangers out of the
past, the Lost Star is forced to sail for the vast asteroid
belts of the Nine Star Nebula known as the drifts, beyond the law of
the Unity, and the Patrol that enforces it. In the drifts Litang and
the Lost Star cross orbits
with all sorts of dangers –
pirates, space wars, assassins, and strange space phenomena that
border on the supernatural. And
make some deadly enemies of their own.
The
Bright Black Sea chronicles the adventures of Litang, his shipmates
and his ship as they attempt
to avoid an untimely death while
unraveling
the mysterious past of the Lost Star.
I
started writing this novel
as a serial, and it retains this
episodic nature. This,
however may make it an easier read since The Bright Black
Sea is
a rather long novel, running
over 326,000 words
in length. While
the over arching story continues from episode to episode, the
episodes divide
the book into a dozen segments,
allowing readers pressed for time, way stations on their voyage
through the Nine Star Nebula.
My
ideal for this novel is Patrick O'Brian's Aubrey-Maturin series.
While there
are hundreds of books about
the Royal Navy in the time of Napoleon, O'Brian's stories stand head
and shoulders above them, in my opinion, because he includes so much
more of the life of the times, and the world of the times,
than the run-of-the-mill nautical adventure. I'm certainly not a
writer of O'Brian's caliber,
but I have tried to write a novel that mixes adventure, mystery,
humor and romance with the everyday world of an interplanetary ship,
and the worlds of wonder it calls on. The
golden age science fiction stories of my youth may have inspired The
Bright Black Sea, but I've taken
those themes and stories and recast them into what I hope you will
find, a rich, unique and rewarding novel.
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