Rachel Peng, Book 4

Still untitled as of now, but the project as a whole is coming together. Here are some infobits for those who are interested.

There’s no publication date at this time, but I always try to put out a Rachel book in the spring, so there’s that.

Rose Loughran has signed on to do the cover art again. Unlike the previous covers, this one won’t feature a notable D.C. landmark.

Like all of the Rachel novels, I try to use the most recent book to mirror the major social and political events within the United States over the past year. One of the major advantages of self-publishing is the ability to address current issues in a timely manner (1). It’s no spoiler to say that all of these fucking shootings need to stop already, but they will continue to occur until someone takes ownership of the rationale which governs (many of) them.

And, here’s a chunk of teaser text:

The Agents had talked about what they would do—what they must do!—if one of their own went against the collective’s community code.

Rephrase: when.

It was only a matter of time, really. As pleasant as it might have been to pretend that their collective was a utopia in which different opinions were discussed and thoroughly parsed, that the Good was preferred over an unattainable Perfect, and that dissention in the ranks was forgiven and forgotten, they knew that there’d come a day when one Agent did something that required a serious response. Punishment, even.

And then the Agents would have to close ranks against one of their own.

Rachel had always figured it’d be her.

It didn’t hurt any less to know she had been right.

Back to work!

(1) Am I worried about this dating the novels? Nah. I’m not pretending people will still be discovering the Rachel books in 25 years. Also, science fiction is always a reflection of the environment in which it was written. Might as well use the minimum barriers of turnover time to my advantage.