The Writing of Challenge Story #1: Jewels in the Night

Jewels is a story I\’ve had in my head for quite some time now, but finally took the opportunity to get down on paper.
Back in 2008, my wife found out about this thing called \”National Novel Writing Month\” – NaNoWriMo. Crazy thing – people all over the world agree to write a 50,000 word book in just 30 days, over the month of November. It had been going on for years, and looked like fun. My wife and I both decided to give it a go.
Accord of Honor was born that November. Accord is a science fiction novel, written about a near future period where Mars has been lightly settled as a UN colony, and regular transit is taking place between Earth and Mars. But something happened a couple of decades prior – a disaster of such scale that the nations of Earth agreed to ban forever all weapons from space. No nation or person was to bring weapons beyond small arms into space, on penalty of death for the offenders.
Accord is all about the inevitable result when disarmament causes a power vacuum. But one of the main characters from that book, Nicholas Stein, helped set into motion the chain of events which led to the events that take place in Accord.
This story finally tells that tale.
Someday, I\’ll get Accord of Honor finished. There\’s at least one sequel in my head as well, and that\’s not written at all. Accord of Honor was lost in a hard drive crash about a year after it was written. I had a paper copy, and began retyping it into the computer, writing freshly as I went, revising and bringing to bear the skills I\’d earned in the two years since first writing it. But then I took a break for a while to work on the Blackwell Magic stories, so the Accord has been on a back burner for a while.
That won\’t last. The story is one burning to be finished and told. As soon as I can free up some time from other work, I\’ll return to the novel and polish it for production. In the meantime, please enjoy this snippet from the past – a time about two decades before the Accord novels begin.
Word count: about 3600 words. This short story has been uploaded and is available on Amazon, B&N, Apple, Kobo, Smashwords, Sony, and other vendors.