RESONANCE BETWEEN OUR SUNS
a DEBUT SPECULATIVE NOVEL LAUNCHING soon to kickstarter!
songwriter Valia trades her fertility for a career among the stars.
But what if Big Tech wants her voice, too?
it’s RUMPELSTILTSKIN MEETS INTERSTELLAR:
Valia Shiau wants nothing more than to launch an independent music station with her bandmate and erstwhile lover Soren, far from the corporate noise of the post-nuclear Metro. But when her father's cancer returns and Soren leaves for a solo career, Valia is left with two choices: fade into obscurity, or monetize motherhood like her sister.
Then Mericor Industries' enigmatic CEO, Jaakoman Bora, offers her a third option—broadcast her music from humanity's first interstellar colony. The catch: making history on Primis means corporate surrogacy light-years away from everything she's ever known.
As a global space race accelerates around her, Valia must decide how much she's willing to trade—her body, her future—even her voice—for the chance to be heard. But Primis holds more than anyone bargained for: the devil, and the divine.
MEET THE CHARACTERS
An excerpt:
The hiss of wire brushes on the snare, the bass thrums low. My synth whispers. I can hear my voice again. This song wasn’t in the set we gave to the A/V crew, so the crowd’s wristbands are dim, unsynced to the inert array of spotlights above me. Those wavering pinprick glows remind me of a rising tide pool, a slowly awakening conservation of hope.
There’s room for Soren in the chorus and I know he’ll join me on instinct, despite hearing this for the first time alongside everyone else. Our melodies pool together, his rich baritone twining through my nightingale soprano. I close my eyes and let the harmony suffuse into my skin. Minor fifth…minor sixth…I can feel the crowd’s growing anticipation; their urgency to resolve the dissonance, a discordant cadence pleading for resolve. The crowd wants us to finish, but I have to sing the final bars. Until I do, no one moves. The world around us is one collective inheld breath.
This. This is why I’ve hung on this long, when other itinerant friends have long since migrated from the margins. Our voices make time stand still. I exult in the feeling, hold it close. Never more than right now, Soren needs me; we need each other. Will we? Won’t we, find our ever after? No questions exist in this perfect moment.
“This will be the end of me /
as you silently seduce…”
I let the last note fade, and Soren holds his gaze as we play the final chords. The crowd ripples at the fermata, the sustained note holding us all.
The murmur. The roar…
