brainwane: My smiling face, including a small gold bindi (Default)
Book cover of Situation Normal

Situation Normal, a new military scifi satire novel by Leonard Richardson (my spouse), comes out this coming Monday, December 14th. Situation Normal is available for preorder now through many sites/services/platforms/stores. You can also enter the worldwide giveaway for a free ebook copy - deadline December 13th.

I already mentioned a few things I think will make this book particularly interesting to y'all, my Dreamwidth readers. As of today it's now easy to read the first two chapters for free (in HTML or PDF) so you can get a proper taste. From the first chapter, "Opt Out":

Midnight on Cedar Commons was warm and windy, and it wasn’t far to the garage where the two Tata Devout hovercars were parked. Becky skirted the edge of the concrete city-dock. After three months on Cedar Commons, Becky was sick of trees, but she’d have the rest of her life to appreciate concrete. Drizzling light through the oak branches were the bright planetary rings, and three of the moons that kept the ring system stable. Becky was a city girl, raised on Earth, and this combination of the familiar and the otherworldly was infuriatingly romantic. A picture similar to this had been on Trellis’s site, and below it had been a very promising bullet point saying

  • 5-month placements with sexually compatible partners

But Trellis On-Site Security was a rre brand, and to its sentient resources department, sex was a perk offered to the humanoid employees. They did not understand that although she and Hiroko had checked the same box on a form, Becky was not sexually compatible with the femmiest, most obnoxious lesbian in the universe.

Becky’s sneakers pressed acorns into the dirt all the way to the garage. Goddamn Hiroko with her manicure machine and her Bible thumping and her pretentious jazz and her repetitive Navy stories. Becky entertained herself with a little fantasy about the fallen ring fragment she was about to discover, and the lanky satellite repairwoman who would drop out of orbit and ring Becky’s doorbell once they called it in.

brainwane: My smiling face, including a small gold bindi (Default)
Book cover of Situation Normal

My spouse, Leonard Richardson, wrote a military scifi satire novel, and it comes out on December 14th. Situation Normal is available for preorder now. You can also enter the giveaway for a free copy.

Kobo and Indigo have a free preview up, so you can see the content notes and start to meet Becky, Hiroko, Myrus, Churryhoof, Dwap-Jac-Dac, Arun, and the Chief. A few short quotes from the first few chapters:

“Your name,” she said. “Ma’am?” A bit of exaggerated politeness, from someone raised on Fist propaganda about humans and their intensely honor-based culture.

....
“Are you gonna kill me?” said Becky.

“Oh,” said Arun, grimacing, as though Becky had farted, or mentioned money.
....
Becky gulped down another slosh of water. She needed something stronger. Trellis had trained her to face down death. Not very effectively, but at least she’d had the training. Nobody trained you how to face unemployment.


This is a darkly funny book by someone who loves Star Trek, the Coen Brothers' films, and Catch-22. I love this book and want to keep quoting it at you. Here's another quote and links to some reviews.

A few things I particularly think are of note for my Dreamwidth readers:

  • This story is told from a bunch of different perspectives, human and alien
  • Some of the characters are queer women who have sex
  • Leonard worked with multiple sensitivity readers since he was (for instance) writing Black and queer characters, and made changes at their suggestion
  • There is violence, but no sexual violence, in the book
  • There are like 3 jokes and references that I get but that people with no experience of Indian culture will not get, and I treasure them
  • Multiple characters in this book are, themselves, scifi fans, and this affects the story
  • If you have grumbled while reading/watching military scifi in the past -- Star Trek, Ender's Game, what have you -- I think you'll enjoy some of the skewerings in this book
  • The publisher, Candlemark & Gleam, is very indie


I am looking forward to more people reading and enjoying this so I can talk about it with you!
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