Quote:
Originally Posted by caleb72
What a word!
I really need to schedule Verdant Skies higher up in my TBR.
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If, for no other reason, than to see how that word is used!
(Oh, heck... just read the
free excerpt, it's in Chapter 1.)
You might be interested to know that, in the same way
Verdant Skies had a mystery (how will they get out of harm's way when everyone wants to board and co-opt them?),
Verdant Pioneers has an interesting mystery as well (which,
heh, I will not divulge here).
However, the sequel is the same as
Verdant Skies in that it is primarily a people story; it examines the lives of Verdant's residents in their new and unique situation, and how they deal with it. It features many of the same characters familiar to
Verdant Skies readers, plus a few others.
When I wrote
Verdant Skies, I had no intention of writing a sequel; I thought it was perfectly formed and finished as it was. Needless to say, a number of readers disagreed, and it became my second most popular sequel-request (after the
Kestral stories).
Part of the reason I didn’t want to write a sequel to
Verdant Skies was, I didn’t want to turn it into a sort of
Space:1999, where the intrepid but otherwise helpless residents of Verdant would be subjected to regularly meeting predictable alien races, battling their way out of mischief, and "translating" off to another episode. I knew there were readers out there who indeed wanted to see them meet alien races, and to engage in surrealistic battles ala
Star Wars. But that just wasn’t what I’d envisioned for these characters or this universe. This was supposed to be a very realistic scenario (as much as travel to other worlds can possibly be, at any rate), and I didn’t see intelligent aliens and “take me to your leader” to be a part of that scenario. I’d found a way out of it by creating the
Kestral universe, and I wasn’t going to make this a part of that.
All the same, I did have some ideas along those lines (aliens, I mean), and was able to explore them in Verdant Pioneers. I think the result is, again, very believable and realistic, and I'm proud of the way it came out.