After a long delay, the first story in my “Human Destiny” setting is now available as an e-book on Amazon:

“Pilgrimage” is a 14700-word novelette, telling the story of how sixteen-year-old Aminata Ndoye first came to the attention of the alien interstellar empire that rules Earth. After Aminata is granted an unexpected degree of privilege by the imperial government, she is unsure as to whether to accept – unsure as to whether she can trust the aliens at all. She embarks on a journey of discovery, and what she learns may determine the path of her life . . . but first she has to survive the experience.

I first wrote “Pilgrimage” a couple of years ago, while taking an online seminar on the art of writing from diverse perspectives. The character of Aminata Ndoye had been in the back of my mind for a while – at the time, I had already written a novella about her and was shopping it around to markets – but I was inspired to write her “origin story” as an exercise for the seminar. Since then the story has seen quite a bit of revision, and I’ve decided to quit sitting on it and get it published.

Next up is the novella, which I hope to have available sometime next week, and then it’s on to a new story based on my world-building project from last month.