As you guys might not know, at the moment I’m working on a sequel to Dark Space.

Dark Space was unexpectedly popular. Well, I didn’t expect it. I thought that maybe people wouldn’t want to read sci fi I wrote (although it’s space opera more than hard sci fi), and I thought that writing it in First Person POV might not really work – for everyone who loves First Person, there seem to be a lot who really, really hate it. And given that the First Person POV was Brady’s…well, he’s kind of an acquired taste. I mean, I liked him, but I wasn’t sure anyone else would.

So the idea of writing a sequel never occurred to me, until people started asking if there was one. And suddenly I got all these ideas for where Brady and Cam—and Kai-Ren—might go next.

I’ve been having so much fun getting back into Brady Garrett’s POV. He was my angry bunny long before Mark Cooper appropriated the term. And, despite Cam’s calming influence, I hope everyone will be pleased to know that Brady’s still got issues with authority. It doesn’t take him long at all to end up in trouble:

“Crewman Garrett,” Stockade Sam said when the MPs dumped me in his custody again. “Your usual room?”

“Can’t I get an ocean view this time?”

Sam grinned at me as I emptied my pockets on his desk. “Insubordination?”

“You’d think they’d have hardened the fuck up by now.”

“You’d think,” Sam agreed.

He let me keep my cigarettes. Sam liked a bit of insubordination himself. He was an older guy. He had a prosthetic leg, but more fool any dickhead who thought he was a cripple. Sam was tough as nails.

We played cards through the bars of my cell and talked shit about the officers for a while. Then, a few hours into my latest enforced visit to the stockade, I got a visitor. Sam got up to check the monitor.

“It’s your better half, Garrett.”

“Bullshit. What if I’m his better half?”

Sam snorted. “Kid, he’s had head lice that are a better half than you.”

Brady has done some growing up though. He’s had to, now that he’s Lucy’s guardian. He and Cam are both adjusting to life back home, and to life in a relationship. Both of them are haunted by what happened out in the black, and the Faceless aren’t finished with them yet.

I’m not sure when Darker Space (I hate titles. That works, right?) will be ready for submission, let alone publication. But hopefully it’ll be worth the wait!