The Forlorn – mine

The Forlorn was the first book I actually sold to a traditional publishing house. Out of the about 3000 sluch submissions that year, they bought one… This one. It was the second book up on the Baen Free Library, and many people have read it, but as the rights have now returned to me, and times are tight, I am offering it for sale again. Vet bills I suspect loom, and there are other important things that even the most self-sufficient family need from time-to-time. The picture is a link, which gives me an extra 6% (which, trust me, is welcome. I got 6% royalty on the book, the first time round)

Across the one human colony world, a place technologically regressed to near medieval, possibly the last place humans still survive, a desperate search continues. Scattered across the deserts, tangled jungles, and alien fortresses, lie the core sections of a matter transmitter.
These sections hold the key to vast wealth, power, or… the fulfilment of the colony’s purpose: to help humankind survive the rabidly xenophobic alien Morkth who will tolerate no other intelligent species. The Morkth managed to follow the colony ship, and, despite their mothership being shot down and their queen being killed, they continue their relentless struggle to destroy humankind… and to reconstruct that incredibly valuable matter transmitter. If they succeed, they’ll be able to return to the hive with the location of the colony of vile humans, and have a new world to occupy. If they fail, they’ll destroy the planet.
The search has gone on for centuries, and it is all reaching an end point. The future hangs in the balance.
The Morkth have lasers, aircraft, nukes. Those who want the core sections for their own ends… have vast armies. Against them are three unlikely reluctant heroes: A street child thief, a dispossessed spoiled brat of a princess, and a confused, amoral Morkth-raised human. They’re armed only with 14th century weapons and their own wits.
It’s a lost cause, a forlorn hope.
But it’s all humans have.