Their secrets threatened their survival
The Human Planets Collective sent young Ambassador Kaj Deder to the former colony planet Ostakis to establish relations. But in the twenty-five hundred years since Earth lost contact with Ostakis, the people of that colony have dramatically changed. Kaj is tasked with finding the reason for these changes while he forges trade links between the HPC and Ostakis. Without trade with the HPC, the dwindling resources of Ostakis will ultimately end human life on the planet. But his mission faces a huge obstacle in the form of Most Reverend Thyenn Sharr, the head of the Faith Progressive Church, who sees Kaj's arrival as the beginning of the end of the Church. Kaj’s powerful attraction to Trademaster Klath’s son, Arlan does not smooth relations.
Arlan Klath, the son of the Trademaster of Ostakis, bears
the secret that the pious people of his planet want to hide from the homeworld
and the HPC. The Curse of the Unspoken, wrought through the unspeakable acts of
the First Colonists, afflicts all Ostakians, but some more strongly than
others. Arlan is totally Cursed, considered born sinful, and he lives without
legal rights or property. Thyenn Sharr focus' his attention on Arlan enraged
Arlan’s father defiantly refuses to submit Arlan to a cruel act to “redeem”
Arlan’s soul. The stakes ratchet when Arlan and Kaj form a relationship that
Thyenn Sharr considers ample justification to usurp the Trademaster position
through the legal power of his Church.
Author: Angelica Primm
Release Date: February 18, 2019
Format: ePub, Mobi, Print
Cover Artist: Natasha Snow
Category: Romance
Genre: Sci-Fi/Fantasy
Word Count: 52600
Book Length: Novel
Sex Content: Explicit
Pairing: M/NB
Orientation: Gay, Bisexual
Identity: Cisgender, Genderqueer/NonBinary
WHY DID I WRITE THIS BOOK?
The characters called out, held my muse hostage and brought
me kicking and screaming to the keyboard and I had no choice but to
write the story. Kaj, the primary protagonist, showed up in not just one
but two of my dreams. He haunted my nights, and I needed my sleep. To banish
him, I wrote the first chapter of a man debarking from his transport on the way
to his first, and probably only, diplomatic mission. Usually, that does it, but
not for Kaj.
My day job is ghostwriter. I spin out tales for mortgage
money for the romance trade. So when a set of characters command my attention
to scribe for them, it has to be an extraordinary story. And they were
relentless in pursuit of my attention. If I didn’t complete a chapter a day,
then I felt unhappy and didn’t produce the work that paid the bills. So I
wrote.
THE STORY ABOUT THE STORY
After the last presidential election, the LGBTQ community
was deathly afraid of losing hard-won rights. It turns out the LGBTQ folks were
right.
Injustice makes me crazy. It also makes me write.
I kept shaking my head while I wrote it. Who would pick up a
SciFi M/M Romance disguised as action-adventure? It seemed unlikely to find a
home though I could always self-publish.
But I pitched it during a Twitter Pitch event. One agent who
looked at it turned it down. Nine Star wanted a few small revisions which I
made, and it took a few months to get back to me after the second submission,
but it was a yes, so yeah!
THE ANGLES
The broader theme of Ostakis is "a society in denial
precipitates its destruction." It is a timely and important theme, because
collectively, as a species, we've let tribalism rule our governments. You can
look at nearly every society on today's Earth and find an "us
vs.them" mentality in the politicians, managers, and administrators of
that government. But our planet has grown too small for tribalism.
Our present-day societal crisis now is we keep fighting that
we no longer can afford our "us vs. them" tribalistic societies. We
can no longer afford to keep our blinders on to the suffering of others. We can
no longer say, "it's okay to repress certain segments of society to keep
this vision of a homogenized society we've created." Denial is also the
societal crisis in Ostakis, brought to a head by dwindling planet resources and
HPC ambassador Kaj Deder's arrival.
Ostakians believe themselves human when they are not.
Outwardly they appear human, but their biology twines with that of original
inhabitants. The humans on Ostakis now have a third gender, one that carries
both male and female reproductive parts. Such individuals Ostakians call
“Cursed by the Unspoken,” or Cursed for short. Their society considers them born
sinful and that they will lead men to sin. Most families hide their Cursed
children. Cursed have no legal rights and are subject to physical abuse
especially in the ritualistic and physically abusive church Shamings performed
to redeemed the Cursed person’s soul.
The citizens of Ostakis are in denial of who their combined
genetic heritage. Why their denial? The colonists used the aboriginals
shamelessly for their survival heedless that their actions nearly destroyed the
aboriginal race. The intermix of genomes produced children that could survive
Ostakis’ harsh conditions, but the colonists did not anticipate the creation of
the third sex, outwardly male, who in their biological heats were irresistible
to men. The repressive Faith Progressive Church rose with the belief that
prayer and devotion would eradicate the stain of the third sex from Ostakian
humanity. But the biological clock has run out on Ostakis, and their society
must change. Refusal to do that spells the death of the human-alien hybrids of Ostakis.
AUTHOR BIO
Born in a century far less progressive than how her brain is
wired, Angelica engages in occupations now considered now less than reputable,
one of them being a ghostwriter of erotic and romance fiction. Since time
travel is not an option, in her off time she contents herself with writing
about people and places in a far distant future with the twists that only come
with traveling to the stars.
Angelica lives in Connecticut with an odd assortment of cats
and humans and putters at hobbies ranging from art to bird watching to studying
lexical density in fiction when she’s not turning a phrase for her supper.
Miss Primm Social
Media
Ostakis Buy Link: https://ninestarpress.com/product/ostakis/
Blog: http://missprimm.com
Facebook Page: https://www.facebook.com/MissPrimmWriter/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/MissPrimmWriter
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/angelica_primm/
