Enter into the heart of an alien race in the first historical novel set in the Peltedverse…
Thousands of years ago, the God of the Faulfenza promised His people He would send a messiah to lead them into a Golden Age, alongside the Others: aliens who would be to them as brothers and sisters. Not a generation has passed without longing for the fulfillment of that Promise.
Zafiil Paidiiza Qodii has dreamed of finding the Others since she was a child, a dream that spurred her to train as leader of one of the Faulfenza’s galactic scout teams. Against all odds, hers is the ship that makes the prophesied discovery–and reveals the cost of the God’s promises, and the part she is destined to play in His designs…
Zafiil: FireBorn Unpainted begins the epic saga of the Faulfenza’s first contact with the Pelted Alliance, and unveils at last the mysteries of one of the Peltedverse’s most beloved alien races.
Almost thirty years ago, a budding author frustrated with her lack of “novel-length” ideas finally broke that logjam with a novel of enormous proportions, a 256,000-word epic spanning the entire life of an alien from childhood to her death as she experienced one of the most revolutionary periods of her people’s history. A small press offered for it in 2000 and I turned them down after we were unable to come to terms on the contract, and at that point, I put it away to wait… and it has been ever since, while I built canon that relied on its events. I knew that I would eventually return to that manuscript, and in 2020, I started editing the parts I wanted to keep and rewriting the parts that needed it.
Two years later, I am ready to present you with the first volume of a story so large I had to break it in two in order for it to have a paperback edition. In many ways it represents a collaboration between that new writer and the much older, more experienced craftsperson she became, but for all that added experience, it remains true to its original spirit, tone, and sense of life. This is the book I have wanted to release since I finally got that idea big enough for a thousand pages.
Zafiil’s wait is finally over. Go get her story.