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I Still Want to Believe…

…that you guys like my books.

Yes, I have a new release coming soon so this is the gratuitous marketing post.

I first pitched the Interstellar Medic series to Toni Weisskopf three years ago at LibertyCon. The idea of a paramedic who’d been swept up into an alien civilization and longs for home had taken root in my brain, and that generally means it’s time to start writing. Thankfully she agreed, but with one condition: this story needed to be two books. Before I could write the one I’d pitched, I’d first have to establish the character and do some serious worldbuilding.

She also said there had to be real aliens, not OG Star Trek types with people in blue body paint and colanders on their heads.

Okay, fair enough. Except I’d never really been into space-alien sci fi, so I had some work to do. Fortunately there was already a lot of existing material to work with, starting with standard abducted-from-my-trailer-park UFO stories. Grays, Nordics, Insectoids, and Reptilians all made for great character fodder, and that’s when I realized I could have a lot of fun riffing on those tropes. And since it was going to have a medical angle…well, we all know the Grays have a thing for rectal probes.

Side note: I promise I had never seen Resident Alien before writing these books.

I didn’t just rely on UFO legends; there has been plenty of speculation by real scientists as to what kinds of strange life forms might be waiting for us among the stars. In some cases, possibly within our own solar system. The idea of giant balloon-like creatures floating among the clouds of Jupiter and Saturn had stuck with me since reading about it in high school (back in the days of cutoff jean shorts and hot-rodded ’63 Impalas).

Those were aliens populating The Long Run. The upcoming book, The Long Way Home, features beings we can’t see without going through some complicated interdimensional jumps. Also space pirates. YARR!

This is all a roundabout way of saying The Long Way Home is the original book I pitched three years ago, and I’m excited to finally bring this story full circle. Will there be more to come? Oh, probably. Melanie Mooney’s adventures could easily become an open-ended series, and there’s already an idea in development (The Long Way Back? Maybe…). There will also be a short story featuring Melanie for a Baen anthology coming out next summer. Besides that, I’m currently outlining the final installment of the Eccentric Orbits series, Terminal Orbit.

Until then, The Long Way Home will be out in paperback and ebook on July 1st wherever fine books are sold!

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I Want to Believe

As a kid, did you go through a phase of being obsessed with the paranormal? I did. My early years were spent buried in books about UFOs, Bigfoot, and ghost stories. No tale was too tall, no conclusion too far of a leap. Tabloids and low-budget TV shows reinforced my belief that the world was filled with supernatural shenanigans, and I was stunned that the adults around me could be so oblivious to the peril we were in. Surely the grownups had to be aware. How could they not be?

My parents eventually convinced me that my trusted sources like the National Enquirer were as fake as pro wrestling. That calmed me down a bit, though I was still coming to grips with the realization that the universe remained a big and mysterious place. Even if I was no longer living in fear of imminent demonic possession or alien abduction, that didn’t mean there wasn’t plenty left that eluded explanation.

In that vein, last year was a big one for UFO lore (the latest official term is “UAP” but I’m stubborn). Congressional hearings and mostly serious news articles have forced the notion of extraterrestrial visitors back into our cultural consciousness, dredging up some of those same feelings I’d wrestled with as a kid. The whistleblower stories are compelling, and it’s hard to say what’s more frightening: that we’re being visited by aliens, or the lengths our government is supposedly going to in order to conceal it.

Of course, there’s been zero physical evidence produced. Classified, you understand, for our own protection. Need to know and all that.

Riight.

So what’s more likely? That aliens are among us, or that it’s all an info op to cover up some technological breakthroughs the Pentagon would prefer to keep to themselves? I’ll point out that the U-2 and SR-71 spy planes had been flying operationally for years before DoD and CIA fessed up to them.

I’ll confess that I don’t know what to make of these stories, much less the cultural impact they’d have if true. They have the patina of truth, but without evidence I’m inclined to think it’s intentional misdirection. Either way, I’m left believing in a conspiracy theory.

All of this has been on my mind more than usual, because of course I was in the middle of writing about an unsuspecting human who gets swept up into an extraterrestrial civilization at the time:

Being a paramedic is a tough job; it’s tougher when you stumble onto a crashed alien spacecraft.

Melanie Mooney thought she was just doing her job when she came upon an unusual accident in the deep woods late one night. Acting alone, what she found was nothing like she’d expected. What followed was even more unexpected.

Recruited by emissaries of a galaxy-spanning civilization, Melanie is thrust into a world she thought only existed in supermarket tabloids. As the first human in the Galactic Union Medical Corps, she cares for extraterrestrials in desperate need of a medic who can ignore the fact that they’re nothing like any patient she’s ever seen, even on their best days. And in emergency medicine, it’s a given that every patient is having the worst day of their life.

Each run takes her deeper into the galaxy and farther from home, navigating alien cultures that only get weirder with each call. It will take all of Melanie’s experience, instinct, and grit to prove herself—and the rest of humanity—to be worthy of the Union. That’s a lot to put on a woman who’d just like to end the day with a cheeseburger and a cold beer.

Maybe it’s serendipitous that my first novel about space aliens and UFOs comes at a time when people are more aware of their possible existence than ever before. It’s a sharp turn from my usual technothriller/hard SF tales and was a ton of fun to write. If you like fish-out-of-water adventures with a plucky main character and poking fun at some well-worn alien abduction tropes along the way, then I think you’ll enjoy Interstellar Medic.

The first installment, The Long Run, will be out in paperback, ebook, and audio next Tuesday, March 5th.

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Coming Soon: INTERSTELLAR MEDIC – THE LONG RUN

Being a paramedic is a tough job; it’s tougher when you stumble onto a crashed alien spacecraft.

Melanie Mooney thought she was just doing her job when she came upon an unusual accident in the deep woods late one night. Acting alone, what she found was nothing like she’d expected. What followed was even more unexpected.

Recruited by emissaries of a galaxy-spanning civilization, Melanie is thrust into a world she thought only existed in supermarket tabloids. As the first human in the Galactic Union Medical Corps, she cares for extraterrestrials in desperate need of a medic who can ignore the fact that they’re nothing like any patient she’s ever seen, even on their best days. And in emergency medicine, it’s a given that every patient is having the worst day of their life.

Each run takes her deeper into the galaxy and farther from home, navigating alien cultures that only get weirder with each call. It will take all of Melanie’s experience, instinct, and grit to prove herself—and the rest of humanity—to be worthy of the Union. That’s a lot to put on a woman who’d just like to end the day with a cheeseburger and a cold beer.

The first installment of the Interstellar Medic series will be available everywhere in paperback, ebook, and audio (which I’m super excited about) on March 5th, 2024!

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Here Be Dragons

Escape Orbit has been nominated for the Dragon Award for best science fiction novel!

The Dragon Awards are purely fan-driven, anyone can nominate their favorites at DragonCon’s website and registration is free. You don’t even have to vote in each category, only the ones for which you have a clear preference. The most nominations in each category will move up as finalists for voting in August. If you enjoyed Escape Orbit, I hope you’ll consider clicking the link and adding your nomination to the tally. I also hope you’ll consider adding a rating or review on Amazon, B&N, or Goodreads (or all three!) and spread the news with your friends and family. Word of mouth goes a long way, and I truly appreciate your contribution.

And I’d be remiss if I didn’t tell you about a new anthology: The Ross 248 Project is a collection of stories about humanity colonizing the worlds around a faraway star. When Baen first approached me about contributing, it was tempting to decline as I was neck-deep in the first draft of Escape Orbit. The greater temptation was to be featured in an anthology that also contained stories by writers like D.J. Butler and Monalisa Foster. Thankfully I made time to do it because writing “Garden of Serpents” was terrific fun. It has something of an Aliens vibe, with an advance team of soldiers carving out a base camp on a planet named Eden. Suffice it to say Eden is a long way from paradise. The Ross 248 Project is available now from Baen.com, Amazon, and anywhere else fine books are sold.

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The Reviews Are Coming In…

Publishers Weekly on Escape Orbit:

“Chiles couches a high-stakes rescue mission in a fascinating and believable methodology for traversing space in this sequel to Frozen Orbit… Though part of a series, this outing’s self-contained plot and interwoven backstory is easy for new readers to follow as mission control on Earth reacts to the reappearance of Jack’s ship at Planet Nine after disappearing from their radar five years prior… Much of this space opera’s enjoyment stems from Chiles’s use of convincing science… This is sure to impress sci-fi fans.”

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Upcoming Appearances

ESCAPE ORBIT is coming out in two short weeks, just in time for convention season!

My first appearance this year will be at FantaSci in Durham, NC, this coming weekend (March 24-26). Among other things, I’ll be on panels discussing how to whip your wayward writing muse into submission, how much research is too much, bringing your otherwise flat characters to life, and defending the honor of the US Marine Corps in a panel called “Tanks, Ships, and Crayon Eaters.” (My favorite flavor is red, BTW.) My better half will also be on a panel for writer’s spouses where they dish on life with the perpetually distracted.

There’ll be a signing event during release week on Saturday, Apr. 8th at Joseph-Beth Booksellers in Cincinnati, OH, and Friday, Apr. 14th at The Book Loft in Columbus, OH.

If you’re in the area, I hope to see you there!

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Five Books for Space Nerds

Shepherd is a new book discovery site, which is competing with Goodreads to become the place for finding good writers you may not have heard of before (and if you’ve spent much time on Goodreads then you know they could use the competition).

Last year they asked me to recommend five books that had an influence on my writing, which I was delighted to do: The best space history books that read like novels. The hardest part was narrowing down the list to only five:

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Winter Meltdown

Southwest’s Holiday from Hell has dominated the news this week. Their route system has fallen to pieces and I can only imagine the nightmare of piecing it back together. I worked in the business for a long time as an aircraft dispatcher, which is the behind-the-scenes function of planning each flight and making sure each one reaches its destination.

That’s the short version. The long version is that they are the people in an airline’s control center who evaluate the weather, plan and file the routes, determine the fuel required, and manage a zillion other small details for each flight, each day, to make sure the whole system runs like a fine watch. It’s fascinating work, but it can also be a burnout job. Like I’m sure it is right now.

I say all this because it gives me some appreciation of the absolute mess Southwest has on its hands. One of the most memorable (as in worst) days of my career was putting a route system back together after our hub had been shut down for weather. Airplanes were out of position, flight crews were timing out (because they can’t stay on duty forever), and we had run out of options. One night’s disruption took the better part of a week to get back on schedule, and that was for a smallish freight operation with about 20 airplanes. Southwest has over seven hundred.

While they have a lot more people to deal with the minutia, the basic problem remains. If anything, it’s exacerbated by the fact that they don’t operate the traditional hub-and-spoke system. All of their routes are “point to point,” meaning they don’t concentrate airplanes and crews at strategic locations like Delta, United, or American do. Some airports get more Southwest traffic than others, but they don’t necessarily maintain ready spares at those locations to pull from when everything goes south.

This is super efficient when it works, but when it doesn’t? Yeesh. Disruptions cascade to the point where the whole system just grinds to a halt. That’s what we’re seeing right now, a metastasizing boulder of crap careening relentlessly downhill. They’ve trimmed their schedule down to less than half the normal daily departures and added a whole bunch of empty positioning legs–which is pure cost to them–all so they can get back to a mostly normal schedule by the end of the month. In the meantime, thousands of passengers are stranded and don’t even ask about their bags.

Some anonymous SWA insiders on Reddit have pinned a lot of the blame on staffing problems and an outdated scheduling and dispatch system. You can do more with less, to a certain extent, if you have the software tools in place to make their jobs easier. 1990’s-level tech won’t cut it. If crewmembers are holding on the phone for hours just talk to scheduling, that time is ticking away against their daily duty limit instead of being spent taking the next trip.

Other than these few brave souls’ admissions, I have no insider knowledge of what’s going on inside the company. But based on my own experience, I can picture it and sympathize. And I’m eternally grateful to be in a consulting gig now instead of in the trenches, struggling to make chicken salad out of chicken $&!+. There’s a saying that it takes decades to build a reputation and minutes to lose it, and I don’t know if they recover from this fiasco.

If you’re stuck in a terminal waiting for that elusive flight out, be nice to the gate agents. It’s not their fault, and I really wouldn’t want their job right now.

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We’re Number One!

Worlds Long Lost is the #1 New Release in Science Fiction Anthologies on Amazon. WOW.

When I was asked to contribute a story for this project last year, I was in the middle of writing Escape Orbit and realized it would be the perfect opportunity for a tie-in. And boy, am I glad to have done it! If you’re intrigued by stories of interstellar archeology amid alien ruins, and if you want some idea of where Escape Orbit will be heading, check out “Rocking the Cradle”.

It was an honor to appear in this, and it was especially thrilling to see my name appearing on the cover along with the great Orson Scott Card. This writing thing is starting to feel like the real deal.

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