Orchid in the Void

Peter "Pete" Soñador made a decent living writing scripts for the popular streaming serial, "Out to the Void", but frequently fantasized about living the life of a real independent spacer. After Pete inherits a large sum of money from his late, long-absent father, his "best friend" John takes him on a drunken celebration that culminates with Pete awaking the next morning as the new owner of a considerably less-than-state-of-the-art "candle" (i.e., space ship) named "Orchid" that Pete apparently purchased at auction the previous evening. With his inheritance gone, Pete finds himself forced into the very life that he's been making a living writing about. He quickly discovers that the real life of an independent spacer isn't exactly like his space opera scripts, though. It seems that real candles don't have artificial gravity that you can turn on-and-off with a switch, faster-than-light drives, or bottomless fuel tanks.

Accompanied by his friend and pilot John, his new girlfriend and "genius mechanic" Cat, crafty trader Lo Phat, and Lo's daughter/legal assistant/body guard Tuesday, Pete and his crew lift-off from their Martian home world and head for distant Ganymede with a cargo of so-called "luxury items" (including institutional grade toilet paper) that's supposedly worth more than its weight in gold on the frozen frontier moon. That's when things start to seem more like one of Pete's "Out to the Void" scripts.

"Orchid in the Void" is a rollicking space adventure set in Earth's Solar System centuries in the future that combines hard science-fiction with pulp detective story intrigue and comic interludes. You'll find it hard to put it down.