Hey there, travelers!

Hope this finds you well and reading something fantastic. I’ve got some exciting updates from my corner of the nearby star neighborhood, so let’s dive in!

🚀 Thorn of Concordia Update

The big news: copyediting begins next month! We’re getting closer to launch, and I couldn’t be more excited. Even better? The first chapter has already been through copyediting, and you can read it RIGHT NOW. It’s included at the back of the First Among Liars short story PDF/ePub (if you haven’t grabbed that yet, what are you waiting for?). Over the next week or two I’ll also be posting it as a standalone page on the website for people not in this newsletter (go figure) to read as well.

I’m very happy with how this first chapter turned out, and hope you enjoy it as much as I enjoyed writing it. What I liked the most was, of course how it ends on a cliffhanger. The best kind of ending to start a book with!😈

📚 A Cóndor to the Stars will get the Treatment

In other news, I just hired the developmental editor for manuscript analysis on Book 2, A Cóndor to the Stars. Katie Wall is a true expert on this work, and I’m bracing myself for some really good (and some probably painful) feedback. But that’s the point, right? The more rigorous the process, the better the book becomes. At least that’s what I’ll keep telling myself when the editorial notes arrive…

✍️ The Entropy of Trust Progress Report

The second Seela story, The Entropy of Trust, is sitting at the 25% first-draft mark. A few more weeks to go on this one, but I’m really happy with how it’s shaping up. Lots of action, intrigue, and the kind of moral complexity that makes writing (and reading) worthwhile. I think you’re going to love this one. And, as newsletter subscribers, you’ll of course get first access to it. Stay tuned.

🎤 Norwescon Recap

Last month I had the pleasure of speaking at Norwescon, the Pacific Northwest’s premier science fiction conference. I participated in panels ranging from how to write realistic space battles (spoiler: physics is hard) to comparing indie vs. traditional role-playing games (non-spoiler: RPGs are fun!). The highlight, though? Two panels on the impact and evolution of AI. Given that I spend my day job designing and using AI, plus my involvement in the Emerging Tech-AI advisory committee at SFWA, the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers Association… let’s say, I had opinions. We had fantastic, open conversations about both the opportunities this technology presents and the very real risks it brings, from personal to societal levels. I’ll probably share more thoughts on this in a future newsletter, but if you have questions about it, feel free to ping me. I love geeking out about this stuff, particularly in the context of writing fiction. 🤖

📗If you’re in the mood for reading something a bit different…

This month I’ve joined a group of SFF indie authors for a story giveaway called Strange Encounters: Quiet Sci-Fi & Unusual Stories. It’s a collection of tales focused on atmosphere, big ideas, and the quietly unsettling instead of the pew-pew side of SF stories… perfect for those who enjoy the more offbeat side of speculative fiction. You can browse the full list here and see if any of these new titles catch your eye. It could be a great chance to explore some fresh perspectives and see what other writers are creating in the genre!

🌕The main course: The Artemis mission, and what it has (and doesn’t have) in common with written SF

If you like space, you’ve probably been as enthralled as I’ve been with the recent Artemis mission to the moon. Since as a kid my grandmother told me stories about how she watched the Apollo missions to the moon on her black-and-white TV in Peru, I’d wondered if I’d ever had that chance. And here it was!

When I planned first for the award-winning Seven Worlds hard SF role-playing game and then for these novels, I knew I wanted them to be as scientifically realistic as possible, while still allowing for the some fantastic elements such as FTL travel and shielding. And whole watching the Artemis mission I realized how many details I nailed and didn’t nail. So I thought, why not share this with you? Below you’ll find some spoiler free descriptions if passages in Thorn of Concordia that refer to space science and how they compare to real science as shown by Artemis, with links in case you want to read more about the science part. Hopefully it’ll increase your satisfaction with the Artemis mission while wetting your appetite for Thorn of Concordia when it comes out later this year!

So, let’s get started!

High-G Acceleration and Deceleration

In Thorn of Concordia, there’s a scene in which a high-stakes space pursuit forces Seela’s ship into emergency deceleration at five gees: characters are crushed into their acceleration couches, breathing turns ragged, and staying conscious becomes a real question. As science-fictiony as that sounds, the Artemis II astronauts experienced their own version of this during reentry: Orion struck Earth’s atmosphere at nearly 24,000 mph (38,600 km/h), and under the nominal flight profile the crew was expected to endure up to 3.9 Gs. Artemis’s entry flight director noted that in off-nominal contingency scenarios, those g-loads could spike to 7 to 7.5 Gs. To cope, astronauts were strapped into specialized seats and wore the custom-fitted Orion Crew Survival System (OCSS) suits, the bright orange pressure suits engineered for launch, reentry, and emergencies. NASA also modified the Artemis II trajectory from the longer “skip” reentry used on Artemis I (which subjected the heat shield to 14 minutes of thermal loading) to a shorter sequence lasting approximately 8 minutes, partly to better manage the combined thermal and g-load stresses on both the spacecraft and the crew.

Exercising in Space

In Thorn of Concordia, Seela ends up boarding a large warship with a dedicated workout facility, called the G-Gym: a 200-meter-radius arm that extends from the hull and spins around the ship’s body, generating roughly 0.5g of centrifugal force through centripetal acceleration. Characters train on exercise machines, spar with punching bags, and hit the sponge showers afterward, because the ship’s designers understood that without gravitational loading, muscle and bone deterioration is inevitable. NASA’s Artemis II crew wrestled with exactly the same problem inside the Orion capsule. Their solution: the Orion Flywheel Exercise Device, a cable-based machine weighing just 14 kg (30 lbs) and fitting under Orion’s side hatch, where it doubles as a step for boarding. Originally nicknamed ROCKY (Resistive Overload Combined with Kinetic Yo-Yo), the flywheel works like (duh) a yo-yo, and generates up to 180 kg (400 lbs) of resistance, supporting rowing, squats, and deadlifts. Each crew member exercised for roughly 30 minutes nearly every day.

Radiation Shielding and Exposure

In Thorn of Concordia I break the rules of physics a bit to postulate the Coulborne Field, an energy-based spherical shield that absorbs cosmic radiation and weapons fire alike (heavily inspired by Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle’s Langston Field). The engineering trade-off is brutal: when the field is active, it blocks all electromagnetic signals, leaving the ship deaf, blind, and unable to communicate. Crews must periodically flicker the field off to get sensor and comms windows, creating exploitable moments of vulnerability. In real life, spacecraft don’t have force fields, but radiation outside Earth’s magnetosphere is still one of the biggest threats to astronaut health… and NASA threw serious instrumentation at the problem. During Artemis I’s uncrewed lunar mission, Orion flew with 5,600 passive radiation sensors and 34 active radiation detectors mapping cosmic-ray exposure throughout the cabin. A real-time alarm system called HERA (Hybrid Electronic Radiation Assessor) can warn astronauts if a solar particle event erupts, prompting them to shelter in Orion’s most shielded area. In a remarkable experiment called MARE (Matroshka AstroRad Radiation Experiment), two life-sized female manikin torsos (Helga and Zohar) rode in Orion’s passenger seats; Zohar wore a StemRad AstroRad radiation-protection vest while Helga flew unprotected, allowing researchers to directly compare absorbed doses across simulated organs and tissues (poor manikins). And here’s a finding that echoes Thorn of Concordia’s shield-orientation concept directly: when mission controllers rotated Orion’s orientation during an engine burn, radiation levels inside the cabin dropped by nearly half — proving that even without a sci-fi force field, the geometry and directionality of shielding is everything.

Heat Buildup and Thermal Protection

In Thorn of Concordia, the Coulborne Field isn’t only about radiation, but also about heat. During sustained combat (of which there’s quite a lot in the book!), a ship’s Coulborne Field absorbs so much incoming energy that waste heat bleeds inward, overwhelming the heat sinks, turning the interior into a sweltering oven. Artemis II’s crew faced a strikingly analogous challenge from physics alone. As Orion plunged into the atmosphere, external temperatures approached 3,000°F (1,650°C), and the capsule’s ablative heat shield had to absorb and shed that energy by charring away in a controlled process — material literally vaporizing to carry heat away from the crew cabin. About 24 seconds after atmospheric entry interface, Orion was engulfed in plasma, triggering a six-minute communications blackout during which astronauts could not speak with Mission Control… a real-world echo of the Coulborne Field cutting off all contact when at full power. And as I mentioned before, just as the novel’s crew must manage the deadly thermal byproduct of their own protective technology, Artemis engineers had to redesign a flight path because the very shield meant to save the crew was eroding in ways nobody predicted.

Everyday Life in Microgravity

In Thorn of Concordia, zero-g living is full of small, textured details: mess-hall bread is specially processed so it sticks to surfaces instead of crumbling, condiments cling to food and skin rather than floating off in blobs, and Seela at one point pins her long hair down with a barrette so it won’t stand up “Medusa-like” in every direction. After G-Gym workouts the crew heads for sponge showers (no running water) and drinks come in zero-g bottles. Artemis II astronauts dealt with the same inventory of quirks inside Orion’s 330-cubic-foot cabin (about 9 m³) for 10 days. There was no shower: the crew cleaned up with baby wipes, liquid soap on a washcloth, and no-rinse shampoo. Food was pre-selected from the ISS permanent menu (which astronauts expected to eat mostly at room temperature), rehydrated with an ambient-temperature-only water dispenser. Orion’s toilet, the Universal Waste Management System (UWMS), is 65% smaller and 40% lighter than its predecessors and uses vacuum suction to separate waste in weightlessness; urine is vented overboard into space, while feces are stored for disposal after splashdown (thankfully! See below). The crew slept in sleeping bags tethered to the walls to prevent drifting into equipment overnight. Even something as simple as hair management is a genuine concern: floating strands can foul instruments or end up in a crewmate’s mouth. Thorn of Concordia’s granular attention to the small absurdities of spacefaring life (sticky bread, sponge baths, sealed drink containers, hair clips) maps almost point for point to what Artemis astronauts actually lived through.

Bonus Fact: Space debris as lethal projectiles

In Thorn of Concordia, a character shares this colorful bit of wisdom: “Did you know turds can damage a spaceship? Near-zero space temperatures and kinetic energy, y’know... Talk about a shitty battle”. As funny/groan as this may sound, the underlying physics is definitive: Any mass, no matter how small, becomes dangerous at orbital velocities. Not an Artemis fact per-se, but on the ISS, an astronaut once photographed a chip in one of the Cupola observatory’s quadruple-glazed windows caused by what ESA determined was likely a fleck the size of a paint chip. At orbital speeds of approximately 17,150 mph, even this microscopic particle gouged the glass significantly enough to be visible to the naked eye.

That’s all for now! Hopefully you’ve both learned some interesting facts about Artemis and are looking forward to reading Thorn of Concordia now. Thanks as always for being part of this journey with me. Your support means everything, and I can’t wait to get these stories into your hands. Until next time, keep your airlocks sealed.

Luis

P.S. Seriously, if you haven’t yet, go grab that first chapter at the end of First Among Liars. I need someone to tell me if that cliffhanger is as cruel as I think it is.