The Hypernova Gambit

Genre: Science Fiction / Adventure
Length: 185,000 words
Current Status: Awaiting Rewrites

She’s the biggest star in the human civilisation known as the Confederacy. She’s idolised by millions, revered as a musical genius, celebrated wherever she goes… and she’d really like it all to stop.

Kolmaz Devrion has had enough of fame. She’s escaping from her stifling, soulless, contract-bound world to a life of quiet, anonymous normality. Her window of opportunity is the run-up to a performance on board the Hypernova, a fifteen-mile long spacecraft that stocks the finest and most exclusive merchandise from across the galaxy.

Anything you dream of can be purchased inside the MallCraft’s eight hundred floors – but Kolmaz finds her escape plan derailed when the Hypernova comes under attack from a sinister group of ‘reality revolutionaries’.

The Cadre of Loathing are out to make the universe a better place, and don’t care who they have to kill in order to do it. Soon they’ve hi-jacked the Hypernova in order to execute a bizarre plan, and the Hypernova authorities are either unable or unwilling to act. Now it’s up to Kolmaz, Gestalt-entity prostitute Jak Hoyle and an eccentric AI named Arkenby to figure out what the Cadre’s real intentions are, and see if there’s any way of stopping them.

Romance. Danger. Universal Cataclysm. And no chance of a refund…

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 (My first completed novel – a broad, colourful, comic-strip mix of Douglas Adams, Iain M. Banks and The Fifth Element that started out life as an idea for a Doctor Who novel, before transforming into something very different. I’ve still got a lot of fondness for this story – especially since it’s the book that got me a literary agent – and I am planning to go back to this in the not-too-distant future for a very big rewrite. It’s also the potential start to a five-volume series, each of which would be roughly self-contained big-scale space opera adventures, all following a believable and relatable female protagonist. (Although I am thinking that I need to change Kolmaz’s name to something a little less sci-fi…))