No, not the pre-Buckingham/Nicks Fleetwood Mac album. I’ve named the ship for the maybe Vella project. (Or maybe it will be a novel. I don’t know yet.)
Last week, I asked for ideas for a ship for a new project. Apparently, Josh Hayes noticed my call-out. I said that JT’s preferred ship was called a Falcon, but I originally wanted to call it an Albatross. Only Josh had just released Edge of Valor. As I’m a regular on the Keystroke medium group, I needed a new name. So Falcon it was. (And no, beta reader who thought everything was a reference to 20th century America, it was NOT named for the Apollo 15 lunar module. Not everything’s an Easter egg.) But the Valor series hit a logical stopping point a while back. Josh suggested it was time for the name to move onto a new series. (And Albatross has been used before, just not at the same time by two people on the same Facebook group.)
So, Athena’s shiny new ship is going to be called an Albatross. And to acknowledge the hand-off, I’m calling it Heart of Valor. It’s even a sort of Hitchhiker’s Guide reference. Woo hoo!
That said, I asked for input. The ship is similar to JT’s Falcon, which is a two-deck assault shuttle that converts nicely to civilian use. It would not have any sort of FTL capability other than using hypergates. Beyond that? Blank slate. One deck or two? What does it look like? What’s the interior like? Heart of Gold? Millennium Falcon? If that, Lando era or Han Solo?
Athena is going to eventually collect a crew of four and get lost. Or rather prevented from going home. So, what will life on that ship, especially with extended stays aboard it, be like?
It also occurs to me that I didn’t give anyone a way to say anything about it. So, send your ideas to tom@tshottle.com. What’s in it for you? Fame? Glory? A share of the inevitable Prime Video royalties?
August 5, the next Suicide Arc novel, Royal Orders, debuts. You get a paperback copy for helping me out. The best idea also gets Suicide Run and Checkmate.