I am writing a series of short stories, space opera, which concern an unlikely duo — Brother Coyote, a monk from a restricted class planet who has a talent for opening wormholes, and Kel Beemer, the pilot of her family’s for-hire freighter. They go on a variety of adventures, with a certain amount of tension despite their opposite personalities. You know, space opera.

I have two and a half stories written, and finishing the third,”Kel and Brother Coyote Deal with a Psychic Allergy”, is something I could finish in a good weekend. And then, more. I would like these to be serialized episodes moving toward a bigger whole, as they’re in chronological order with not a huge amount of time between them.

I’m going to have a lot of time this summer, because I can’t take a summer class for the certificate in Disaster Mental Health, so I’ll have plenty of time to write. I’d like to write at least 5 more Kel/Brother Coyote, but that will only get me 10k-12k words. Enough for a chapbook.

Not enough for Kindle Vellum. Their business model will make the first few chapters free, and I won’t have many chapters after that. But I LIKE the business model, much more than WattPad (good luck getting noticed) or Chanillo (subscription only; no promotion). So I might try it this summer, while I’m writing more on the adventures of Kel and Brother Coyote.

An excerpt of “Kel and Brother Coyote Deal with a Psychic Allergy”:

In a strange room, on a strange planet, Kel lay on a strange bed on the floor, wrapped in tight bandages across her ribs. She glanced up at the glittering suncatcher that her partner, Brother Coyote, called a Sun Mandala. Kel, hopped up on painkillers after a spectacular rescue of the leader of Ridgeway III, dared not look at the wall where the reflection of the mandala shimmered. If she did, she might see something again, and she didn’t want to deal with that just then. The prisms sparkled and made her sleepy. She closed her eyes …

She heard the doorknob open and opened her eyes to Brother Coyote and a floating carry unit. He shut the door and sat down next to Kel, folding his lanky legs up beneath him. The gravitation unit sank gracefully to the ground. “Mom sent me up with dinner from the buffet line. She’ll be up in a few minutes.”

“The party’s still on? After an attempt on her life? That’s a pretty gutsy broad — Oops,” Kel giggled. “I suppose I shouldn’t call the Convener of the — the Moot — a gutsy broad.”

“Mom would have no trouble with that,” Coyote chuckled, pushing back his blond hair. “As for the party continuing, that’s a Ridgewayan cultural tenet. The celebration must go on. We remember too many times we’d quarantined ourselves from various fevers on the planet, so we celebrate any time we can.” Coyote lifted the lid of the carry unit; savory smells enveloped her.

“How do you get carry units on this planet if you’re a restricted trading planet?” Kel wondered aloud. “I can’t make that make sense.” Kel found herself wishing her tongue weren’t quite so loose.

“It doesn’t have an internal grav source, of course. I’m levitating it. Luckily it doesn’t take too much energy.” Kel sat up and Coyote transfered the tray to her lap.

“Ok,” she said. “What’s this?” Whatever it was, it smelled much better than meal bars.

“The stew there is made with native mushrooms and a legume that developed into a landrace here.” The stew, she noted, was an intense golden color, and from the smell, she suspected that Ridgeway III had a local equivalent of curry powder. “Then, with that, is a mess of greens that combines diaspora culture DNA tailored for this planet and some local weeds we’ve cultivated into crops. The two grow together symbiotically, which is a bonus.”

Kel took a small spoonful of the stew. “Take a bit of both individually. Then take a bite of them together. Then try a little of that paste on the edge of your plate with them. It’s important to be creative with your food,” Coyote instructed.

“Tell me, how does one get creative with meal bars?” Kel smirked, but she tried the food anyhow. “Wow,” she said after a few minutes absorbed in her food, which smelled warm and mellow, contrasting tartness and a deep mellowness. “This is amazing. What do you use for spices?”

“A lot of things, largely local. We have a tropical belt which accepted diaspora spices, and we have many herbs. This planet has immense agricultural potential, but only if it’s cultivated carefully. And by carefully, I mean as close to wild as possible.”

“So you’re hunter-gatherers instead of farmers.” Kel finished her meal and considered the pastry on the tray.

“Well, not hunters, unless you count mushrooms. We’re wildcrafters, we’re permaculturalists, we’re companion planters. We’re tree climbers, plant researchers — did you know there’s a plant here only pollinated by one particular miniature fruit bat? The guy’s not much bigger than a fly and climbs into the fruit’s flowers and gets drunk, then visits other flowers on a bender. He finally passes out in a flower and sleeps until the petals drop out from under him.”

“You must have a lot of farmers if you can’t factory farm.”

“Yeah, but we don’t have a lot of factories. We have them for the technologies we’ve chosen, but we also have artisans and craftsmen. You might notice this tray is wooden.” Indeed it was, Kel noted. “We have a stepped-down economy, and not a lot of us go off-planet, as you might guess.”

Kel found herself looking at the reflections of the sun mandala, which were mere shadows on the wall as twilight fell. Her sight blurred as she found herself sucked into a vision — Keyli, the Convener of the Moot for Ridgeway III and Coyote’s mother, strolling down the hall with a feline creature that came up to above her knee, trotting beside her on a leash.

“Coyote,” she said, instantly regretting the words when they fled her mouth, “Does Ridgeway have felinoids the size of Terran Shepherd Dogs?”