The wait is almost over, my friends! For some of you it IS over, since I’ve heard from a lot of you that your copies of Tantalus Depths arrived a day early! All across the country, people other than me are finally getting to hold a copy of Tantalus Depth in their own two hands, and I am absolutely freaking out about it!
There’s so much still to do in the final hours before launch, so I can’t take much time to post a lengthy update. I’m hoping to see many of you at my big launch event in the auditorium of Kent State Trumbull tomorrow evening at 7. Please come out and see me! I’ll be signing books, taking pictures, and doing a little reading for you all. Let’s come celebrate this launch together!
Okay, here it is: the final two characters in our Tantalus Depths lore series, and naturally I saved the most important for last. I give you the stars of the show: the esteemed starship pilot Mary Ketch, and the cunning artificial intelligence, SCARAB.
Mary’s had a rough time of it lately. She signed on to pilot the XIS Diamelen for Exotech’s survey mission to Tantalus 13 in hopes that some time away from her troubles at home might give her a sense of clarity or purpose. It wasn’t supposed to be more than that, but it wasn’t long after landing that her expectations of what this mission was going to be flew completely out the airlock. Now she’s been dragged into a cosmic mystery millennia in the making, and the stakes are life and death. When things get bloody, will she have what it takes to get home in one piece?
SCARAB is the ultimate AI assistant. It can build anything out of anything; its sole purpose is to turn a lifeless world into a home away from home for its human crew. At least, that’s supposed to be its sole purpose. The SCARAB unit sent to Tantalus 13 seems to have found another one, and it isn’t keen on letting anyone know what that purpose is. One thing seems perilously clear, however: the safety of the Diamelen’s crew is not its top priority.
Read all about Mary Ketch and SCARAB on my website now, and in the pages of Tantalus Depths everywhere tomorrow!