My X Factor

On my newsletter*, recently, I explained why writing the second book in the Endurance series felt a lot like writing in a vacuum.

I was almost in the same boat writing Promissory Note, but by then, I had committed myself to this series, so I sailed ahead without too much concern.

Promissory Note has confirmed for me that this series is going somewhere.  I really liked this story.  I mean, I like them all, but this one has something extra in it that I didn’t expect.  One of those x-elements that not even the highly-paid editors in New York could delineate, even if their jobs depended on it (and they often do).

I’m so glad I finally dipped into the science fiction romance field.  It’s proving to be a real boost to my creativity and I’m back to enjoying writing once more.  Full time writing helps with that (as the day job definitely did not), but the change of pace is refreshing.

From your emails and messages, I get the impression you agree with me, too.

Here’s the blurb and a little snippet.  For more details, check out the book page here (where there is a second snippet!).

Artwork by Dar Albert, the art goddess.

They can change life aboard the Endurance, if only they can work together.

Thanks to a small disaster aboard the Endurance, popular, beautiful and adored Laura Hyland is unable to meet the terms of a promissory note she wrote.  The note has been signed over to the horrible Micah Thorn, an elite coder with a dark reputation and no social skills.  The note ties Laura to Thorn and forces her to work with him. When she digs into his personal history, though, his work takes on a far deeper meaning…and could change everyone’s life for the better.

Promissory Note is the third book in the science fiction romance series readers are calling gripping, superb and fantastic.  Written by award-winning SFR author Tracy Cooper-Posey, it is set aboard the closed-system marathon-class vessel Endurance, a generation ship a thousand years from its destination.  If you like the smart, romantic SF of authors like Linnea Sinclair and Anna Hackett, you will love the Endurance series.

Dive into this thought-provoking new romance series today!

EXCERPT FROM OCTAVIA’S WAR
COPYRIGHT © TRACY COOPER-POSEY 2016
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

Thorn pulled up Kelly Peck’s public profile. His 3D image looked slimmer than the real version. Kelly was due for a new scan, clearly. On the other side from his revolving figure were the public notices. Many of them had the icon that indicated they were promissory notes.

“I want you to examine every promissory note and give me your analysis of it,” Thorn said.

“Analysis?”

He scrolled through the notices on Kelly’s profile, then pointed to one. “There, for instance. Kelly took a note from Jadran Patrick, promising a bolt of parasilk for a pound of hand-ground flour.”

“I see that,” Laura said patiently.

Thorn lifted his hand, palm up, toward the note. “Peck barters produce. Why would he take parasilk and why a whole bolt of it for a pound of flour? And why, if he was interested in garments, would he take unconstructed fabric?”

“Oh….” Laura pressed her fingertip to her lip, thinking. She had seen Kelly make dozens, if not hundreds of these types of barters before. “Scroll up, to deals made later than that one. Slowly!” she added.

Thorn paged up slowly.

“There,” Laura said, pointing. “He traded the parasilk for six baskets of cherries. Wow, that was a deal,” she added.

Thorn tilted his head to one side. “Why would this woman, Paula, take a mere bolt of parasilk for all those cherries?”

“Because she lives in the Palatine. I think she has a cherry tree next to her house,” Laura explained. “That’s why Kelly made the trade with Jadran for the silk. Oh…wow, now I understand,” she breathed. “Jadran wanted the flour because he makes muffins for the café in the marketplace in the Esquiline. His partner, Benji, has some secret pattern for printing the softest, bluest parasilk I’ve ever seen or felt. So he can get the silk easily, but not the flour. So Kelly took the silk and gave him the flour.” She looked at the date on the note. “Two months later, when the cherries were ripe, he traded the silk to Paula for her six baskets of cherries, which were almost worthless to her. Kelly would have traded those cherries and got back far, far more than a bolt of silk in return. Everyone loves cherries.”

She shook her head in admiration. “That means Kelly had figured out this three-sided deal at least two months before. I had no idea how smart he was about all this.”

Thorn nodded. “He understands supply and demand intuitively. Most people only understand their own personal needs and miss the other side of it. This is where your popularity will serve me. You know these people and understand the reasoning behind the deals…or you will, once you examine them in this way. I want you to go through every note and analyze it, matching up multi-step transactions just as you did with this one. I suspect it is not the only double-deal he made. He has a flair for the work.”

“Every single note Kelly as ever held? There must be hundreds of them!”

Thorn shook his head. “Every single note, ever.”

Laura stared at him. “There are thousands of them.”

Thorn crossed his arms. “I have two years of your time,” he reminded her.

Horror spilled through her. Two years of no life beyond work and then more work after that? Two years of watching other people have fun while she slaved away?

“Do we have a problem, Ms. Hyland?”

Think of the house, she commanded herself. She shook her head. Her heart was thumping unhappily.

Thorn shut off the screen. “I can see you have concerns, so let me lighten the deal with an incentive.” He nodded toward the space where the screen had been. “Once you have finished the analysis—all of it—I will cancel your note.”

Her heart just thudded harder. “What if I finish in a week?” she asked. Her lips felt thick and uncooperative.

His smile was the same as the only other smile of his she had seen. It was brief, yet completely changed his appearance. “If you do manage to finish the work in a week, I will cancel the note in that same moment. I doubt you will be done that quickly, though. No one works as hard as me.”

“Even you couldn’t do it in a week,” she replied. She glanced around the sterile room once more. “I’d better go and get started. I want my life back sooner, rather than later.”

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