Novels On Hold

These are novels which I am currently taking a break from writing.  All of these have words on pages, but for one reason or another they are not speaking to me at the moment, so I have set them aside for other works.

KILL HITLER

What would you do if you had a time machine? For Fred Herschel, the obvious answer is to kill Hitler. Defying the Temporal Stability Agency, Fred assembles a team of like-minded agents, steals a time machine, and travels back to the 1936 Olympics to assassinate one of history’s vilest assholes. However, the TSA sends a marshal to apprehend Fred and his allies, the Gestapo begin to put the pieces together, and the weary would-be assassins start to wonder: will killing Hitler actually make the world a better place, or would his death directly lead to Nazi victory?

Diplomacy: A Love Story

Guinevere Thrifton is the daughter of a wealthy shipping magnate, but despite her father's riches, her heritage is widely questioned, damaging her marriage prospects. Charles Swan is a poor naval officer who failed to play the political game and finds himself closed out from the path of advancement and glory, despite his skill. When Guinevere's father hires Charles to build a ship, the two immediately connect, but recognize that their love would be doomed by their differences in wealth and social standing. Since they cannot find happiness in each other, both Guinevere and Charles decide to instead help the other find a suitable match.

This proves easier said than done. The only eligible man of standing who is willing to overlook Guinevere's tainted reputation is an old, crude plantation owner looking for a wife to care for him in his twilight years, and the only women willing to overlook Charles' poverty include the dispossessed, the desperate, and the most determined flirt in the entire colony. As the two try to navigate the treacherous waters of matrimonial romance, they find that others would rather treat them as playthings than mates, and their growing attachment, ill-advised though it is, proves a greater obstacle to their happiness than all the inconstant men, deceptive women, and vengeful rivals who threaten their futures.

Driftmetal

An historic alliance between two desperate enemies, the Vox Star Empire and the United Democratic Republic of United Star Systems, resulted in a declaration of war from the more powerful Corporate Confederation. Now Nadika Wict, a cadet at the Imperial Naval Academy, is stranded in an orbital graveyard which is all that remains of the allied fleet after a cataclysmic defeat. When she is rescued by a damaged Republic warship, she finds that despite her youth and inexperience, she is the ranking officer left alive on the vessel. Unfortunately, despite their alliance, the egalitarian Republicans dislike Imperial officers, and the men of the crew chafe at being ordered about by a female officer.

There is no time to correct her crew's borderline insubordination, as Nadika must guide her vessel from hulk to hulk searching for intact technology needed to repair the ship and rescuing the few survivors they find there. As her ersatz crew incorporates members from various allied nations, the increased infighting threatens their combined effort to escape the debris field, and when it seems that Nadika might be able to overcome the threats of mutiny and malfunctioning equipment, CorpCon returns to sweep the wreckage for survivors, and they make it clear that they are not looking to take prisoners.