Local Star, Aimee Ogden [ebook reader that looks like a book txt] 📗

for embarking on this trip with me and for doing the hard work of providing a flight map along the way.

There have been so many people who helped with reads and critiques along the way, including the wonderful Codexians (go team BB-8!) who read the first draft; my VP22 classmates Alice Towey and Kaitlyn Zivanovich, who helped me wade through rewrites; Julia Patt, and of course the splendid Bennett North, who is a thoughtful external editor as well as a reliable voice reminding me when to turn off the internal one.

I also owe big thanks to the proofreading crew at Interstellar Flight Press—Joanna Velez, Kaylee Craig, Jeremy Brett, and Corey J. White—who had a mighty big job text-wrangling the kind of messy . . . er, sprawling world-building that I tend to generate on the fly, and to cover artist Oleg Tsoy for a fun wrapper that I hope will catch the eye of anyone judging this book by its cover.

And finally, thank you to Mr. Shakespeare, who I think would not object to a remix of this nature: thanks for these dollies to play with! It was a lot of fun to dress them up in space suits and fling them around for a bit.

About the Author

Aimee Ogden is a former science teacher and software tester; now she writes stories about sad astronauts, angry princesses, and dead gods. Her short fiction has appeared in venues such as Analog, Beneath Ceaseless Skies, and Fireside, and another novella, Sun-daughters, Sea-daughters is forthcoming from Tor.com. She also co-edits Translunar Travelers Lounge, a magazine of fun and optimistic speculative fiction. Find her online at aimeeogdenwrites.wordpress.com.

About the Cover Artist

Oleg Tsoy is a freelance 2D illustrator, comics artist, and gamer from Almaty, Kazakhstan. His work appears in Russian and Ukrainian comics and magazines. Find him online at Artstation or on Instagram as MasterOfSpirits.

Interstellar Flight Press

Interstellar Flight Press is an indie speculative publishing house. We feature innovative works from the best new writers in science fiction and fantasy. In the words of Ursula K. Le Guin, we need “writers who can see alternatives to how we live now, can see through our fear-stricken society and its obsessive technologies to other ways of being, and even imagine real grounds for hope.”

Find us online at www.interstellarflightpress.com.

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