Afterword
So, that was fun!
At least, it was fun for us, and we hope it was fun for you.
Salvage Right was an attack novel. By which we mean to say that neither one of us expected to write this book, and certainly not this book now.
Here’s where we were in October 2021.
Steve was lead on the next book, after Fair Trade, Trade Lanes. Sharon was going to be lead on the book after that, due sometime in 2023, and she was kind of looking around inside her head, as she does, for story hooks and characters who were in—or about to be in—trouble. She was pretty certain that her next book would be the direct sequel to Trader’s Leap, though there was just a little niggle of worry in the back of her mind about the characters last seen on Tinsori Light, in Neogenesis.
While those characters were in a better place than they had been, they were by no means in a good place. Jen Sin yos’Phelium in particular had stood a cruelly long and difficult shift. Not only that, but the Lyre Institute wanted Tinsori Light in the worst way—and we do mean that literally. The Institute’s interest meant that Tolly Jones was in a risky spot—and then there was Tocohl’s situation! Tocohl had never wanted to be a space station, and yet—here she was.
Clearly things needed to be made right at Tinsori Light.
A word here about authors and their relationship with their characters.
Authors are, well—gods. Small gods, certainly, and ever so fallible, but look at what we do.
We create worlds, and space stations. We place people in perilous situations. We give them lovers, and lives.
And we take them away.
All in the name of “telling a good story.”
The characters on Tinsori Light deserved better from their authors. They deserved not only hope, but help. They deserved a reason to believe in good things again. They needed reasons to go forward.
More—they needed to be able to go forward.
So, this small tale of redemption, of people—even the unlikeliest group of people—working together and caring about each other as well as a mutually sustainable outcome.
It was fun—that word again—working with Seignur Veeoni, Tolly Jones, Delia Bell, Theo, Bechimo, Joyita—well, all of them. Seignur Veeoni came out especially well, we think.
And Jen Sin yos’Phelium?
What a pleasure to work with Jen Sin yos’Phelium, with his canted sense of humor and his need to protect those things that fall under his care, be it a handful of rogues and misfits, or an entire universe.
If you had half as much fun reading this book as we had writing it, we’re well paid.
Speaking of fun, as we have been—Catalinc Station owes her call-name to the generosity of C.E. “Catie” Murphy. When we asked if we might use her name, she responded with such enormous enthusiasm, it brought us a whole new level of delight in the work.
Anyhow—the characters can take it from here, we think, though we may want to just peek in on them every so often, to see what they’re up to.
To recap: We had fun. We hope you had fun, too.
—Sharon Lee and Steve Miller
Cat Farm and Confusion Factory
July 2022