I'm super excited to share with friends and readers this gorgeous cover for my new science-fantasy, space colonisation, dystopian turned hopepunk novella, Once We Flew. In true me fashion, this story is another genre mash—we have lost colonists, crashed spaceships, magic-like abilities, visions, journeys and more. But enough rambling, let's get on with the reveal!
Here it is! Isn't it lovely?
Credit where credit's due—massive thank you to Maria Spada for the wonderful design.
Blurb for Once We Flew
Four generations ago a generation ship crashed into the sands of Savene. Since then, its survivors have eked out an existence in the planet’s hostile desert. Yet, the tech is failing, the sands are encroaching, and people are dying.
Rescue is still generations away—if it comes at all.
But Marsa is a survivor.
And an outcast.
Infected with the Chrysalis—a disease that grants its carriers uncanny abilities—she keeps her distance from her dwindling community.
Until an old friend’s dying wish sends her and a young boy across Savene’s inhospitable sands in search of something Marsa had thought she’d long forgotten.
Hope.
Behind the scenes of Once We Flew
A bit of background on this project. Once We Flew started off as a short story for Clare Rhoden's From The Waste Land anthology, an anthology of speculative fiction inspired by lines from T.S. Eliot's poem The Waste Land. I chose the line 'We who were living are now dying' with the idea of having a science fantasy story about a sand mage set on a desert planet and off I went. By about half way through drafting Once We Flew I had an inkling this project might go a bit over the word limit for a submission to From The Waste Land. By it's end? Try nearly 10,000 words over the limit (oops!). Luckily I was still able to write another, much shorter story for Clare and From The Waste Land using a different line as inspiration, however, that left me with a novella I didn't know what to do with.
So we here are.
Once We Flew will release on 14 November 2023. Preorder your copy here!