I’d like to introduce you to my publishing catalog. What I find is that I tend to write to specific themes, elements, and settings so I’ll tell you about my major categories (except for horses. There will always be horses most of the time).
Let’s start with how I deal with corporate weirdness in science fiction. Besides being a corporate spouse in the aerospace industry (which was rather interesting in its own right), I spent several years working as a complex securities litigation paralegal on some big cases, primarily in what is called the “discovery phase,” before all of that work was digitized. Which meant handling paper. A LOT of paper.
As a result, besides depositions, I saw a lot of internal documents, memos, and other communications that somewhat showed the dark side of how—in this case—dysfunctional corporations work (because you don’t get to complex securities litigation without things going bad in a BIG way). Add in what I saw as a corporate wife who participated in a number of corporate social situations, and, well…lots of material there.
This background drives a lot of my science fiction.
The entire Martiniere Family Multiversal Saga (which consists of the Martiniere Legacy quartet, the People of the Martiniere Legacy trilogy, the A Different Life duology, and The Cost of Power trilogy) is based on a powerful yet problematic closely-held family corporation with a strong line of hereditary leadership and a hidden development of mind control technology. This multiverse also has indentured servitude as a major component, which leads to a major conflict between the leader of the Martiniere Group/Martiniere Family and his successor, over forcing mind control technology on indentured workers.
When that leader tries to destroy his successor… you get the main Legacy quartet plus the People trilogy. The Cost of Power trilogy focuses more on the impact of bad decisions by previous Martiniere Group leaders as related to the mind control technology, and is the most explicitly multiversal of the four series. Both The Cost of Power and A Different Life series deal with corporate warfare, which is also an element in one of my other series…the Netwalk Sequence.
The Netwalk Sequence is set in an entirely different sort of world, where a separate judicial system exists to manage corporate conflicts at the international level. It’s rather unclear to the degree to which the Corporate Courts also control national political structures, although it is implied that they have a lot of influence. The Courts manage a malign, unknown war machine that randomly destroyed multiple cities worldwide for no apparent reason, called the Disruption Machine/the Gizmo or the “gadget” (and other pseudonyms, For Reasons). More than that, though, the Corporate Courts have a lot of influence over tech development, especially with regard to space. Add in a multigenerational struggle over the control of digital personality upload technology, including the presence of the family matriarch after her death and…it becomes quite the family conflict.
Family conflict is a big part of my two standalone books that deal with corporate misbehavior. Beating the Apocalypse is set in a dysfunctional world where a big chunk of North America is locked under a dome-type containment to keep it from polluting the rest of the world. The Coalition for North American Survival is working to clear the skies under the Dome from toxic Clouds that kill most who are exposed to them…except that there are hypersensitive people called Canaries who can detect and forecast the appearance of Clouds. But the CNAS may have a hidden agenda…and the top Canaries are disappearing.
Federation Cowboy is a far-future space opera with romantic elements that brings in a touch of the Western settings I love to write about. Caroline Starshine has changed her name and seeks to establish a new career in the Federation Congress, away from her controlling family on Earth and the corporation tied to her family, Hart Mercantile Services. But her family may not be willing to let her go, and Hart Mercantile is up to no-good schemes with the intention of controlling not just the trade in a particular plant-based drug, rella, but also establishing a galactic empire.
Besides corporate hijinks, these books also share a contemporary-style Western theme or settings. In my next newsletter, I’ll talk about the contemporary (and occasionally Pacific Northwest historical) elements in my books. Meanwhile, here’s some free samplers so that you can get a taste of the corporate weirdness in my work!
The Martiniere Family Corporate Weirdness Sampler: https://dl.bookfunnel.com/p3zrsk5bke
Netwalk Sequence Corporate Weirdness Sampler:
https://dl.bookfunnel.com/4nkr251psk
Science Fiction Corporate Weirdness Sampler: