Working on my next short for my third collection. Successions and coronations should be as boring as possible. Extravagant, sure, but boring. A non-boring succession is called a civil war or revolution.

As I alluded to in the manuscript of The Fallen – now entitled Martian Wonderland – Empress Fussy is retired. A bit curious as to how that happened, I began to make some notes. Those notes are turning into this story. However, who wants to read “boring”? As an old friend gifted me: ”start killing people and blowing shit up.” Okay, I’m pretty good at that. So, this will start tamely, get some foreshadowing going in the next installment, then the blood will start raining. Works for me.

The fundamental tension shall be two-fold: Faustina built her imperium upon military force and the conquest of first the Deep South and later the northeast up to the Northern Federation. Being demi-human, her rule is hands-off (subsidiarity) yet personal. Handing her legal and extra-legal powers to another woman – another older woman in the eyes of many humans – is a provocation. You can read in Ice Inundation Intelligence where Robert talks about factions inside the imperium who want a return to a republic and chafe at being under a family sprinkled with “more human than human.” The succession is when it comes out into the open.

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