A wannabe
POP STAR
turned immortal
SUN DEITY
slips through
alternate realities,
BATTLING
a seizure disorder,
planet-burning aliens,
and zombie-like dazers,
while trying to save her friends,
her crush, and the galaxy
before DESTINY
kills her whole vibe.
The Princess of the Soleria, or the Sun Clan, is from the seventh ring of Saturn in the Sol System. As captain of The Rising Sun, she’s known for her dreamvisions, telepathy, bioluminescence, sunrays, solarplosion, EMP, slipstream surf, and flying. Her nickname is Sunbeams. She is alt that, but also just an immaculately conceived immortal sun deity who wants an Earth boy to love her across space-time forevermore, sing, surf, and hang with her sentient dog.
Her best friends are Eclipse, a giant panther, and Sunbeams, a regular-sized horse. She's a great listener and can speak in dreams. At some point, everyone calls her Soleil until certain people finally figure out that dogs can time travel, too.
The Prime Aetha is the leader of the Aethan Clan. Since he is Terran-born, he often has to return to Aetha Prime, a planet populated only by teens, in his ship, The Astral Seascaper, to compete in a series of contests to the death that are frequently interrupted by long stretches of mating and consuming cheeseburgers and Mexican Cola. But they don’t call it Mexican Cola on Aetha Prime, just good cola. Nicknamed Stickster, his gifts include gray lightning and the ability to absorb other powers. Also, he mistakenly thinks Selene is his dog.
In the wake of the Firegale most Burn, many Daze, only a few Evolve. In the early days, Dazers were easy to kill. Soon they were fast, and later smart. Then they got hungry.
The Air Elemental has never met anyone from the Airan, who are known for their webbed armpits and toes and beak-like noses. That's so not her. The leader of the Air Clan goes by the name of Skyhaven. Unlike her people, she is Terran-born and achieves flight not by gliding, but rather through the gifts of windy hair, hand whirls, and the spin vortex. Her spaceship, the Sky Haven, is the largest in space, meant to serve as an aviary because her clan fears confined spaces above all else. She’s totally into Jordin but not so much her goofy brother Baeran or her title, Talon.
The Water Elemental, known as the Wydrate by her clan, only ever piloted her spaceship, The Shui Nuer, for a short time before crashing it. Her abilities include the power to heal, form whirlpools, and make killer waves. At the dawn of the apocalypse, she harbored a secret. She’ll fight when she must, but is most comfortable tending to those who’ve suffered on the battlefield. While Baer was her first love, Lani will always have her heart.
Survivors who burn themselves on purpose.
The Duchess of Darkness is nobody's Shadow. The leader of the Nemar hails from the dark star Nemesis. Her first power, the Illusion, took the form of freckles, then tattoos. Telepathy, Nether, Blackshine, Nemepulse, Shadow, Unpossiblevision, Flying, and Technoconstruct followed later. Like all from the Nether Clan, she dyes her blonde hair black. She grew up on a farm, and a goat once saved her life. Her spaceship, The Dusk Singularity, was built from the scraps of space debris and a Ferocity regeneration pod. She's not overly fond of Soleria, except for that one time she accidentally fell in love with one.
The Nemar always have it tougher than the Soleria. At any given moment, while someone from the Sun Clan is being bathed in bright light and singing on the beach, somewhere, someone from the Nemar Clan is being tortured. If it's not a Nemar's back being carved with hot iron, or having to live on a planet of ash, it's like having to listen to a Soleria sing.
Nemar are Soleria who have left the Sun Clan, choosing to forge their own destiny. While most Soleria cannot love and only one has ever chose a male mate, the Nether Clan has broken free of those bonds.
Scorch has got a ship called The Soleria Bane. It's named for how Solstice's people don't know how to love, which would seem like the worst, but he's also Fire Clan. And the Ferocity like to burn, burn it all, and burn it again. So, arguably, everyone hates his clan. Technically, he's an Emperor, but nobody ever gave him the title, maybe because he's got a real problem with clothes. Plus, he's dabbled in dazing and eating people, so there's that. But he likes hats and dwarfs or dwarves. He's never sure which is right. But Solstice was once sweet on him and his Red Light hands, and she was an elf, or an angel, no wait, an alien.
You say it like K.C., not case. She used to have a Y at the end of her name, but the apocalypse blew it off her name tag, and she's been mad ever since. She doesn't care about being Queen of the Dazed, her stupid ship, The Lost Solace, or the Earth Clan, aka the Eartarin, a bunch of farmers who allow their planet to be burned continuously 1/7th at a time, or how her title is the Plot. But she's okay with her nickname, Smash, because she's got quake feet, power punch, and super strength. Also, the apocalypse is devoid of coffee, which is the worst because she was a barista until it blew off her Y and vaporized all the beans.
The last Elemental to get his powers has no formal title, nor a home planet, and arguably the worst icon ever–the uni boob. SmithX can shape stone and nothing else, and yet he's responsible for building Terramore Prime, the super-secret hideout of the Elementals, based on all the best stuff he remembers from comic books growing up. His spaceship, The Slipstream Echo, has the same subspace drive as Baer's, but Baer made his pointier and longer. Go figure. Also, he's The Map. If you need to go to the center of the galaxy and find a seven-ring planet that one day will become a star, he's your guy.
Chris Ledoux writes about worlds destroyed in an instant and the wreckage left behind. He’s an engineer-turned-landscaper whose life was derailed by a reckless driver. He walked away with a broken back and a seizure disorder, and then, because apparently disaster couldn’t keep him down, found a new calling as a writer.
He’s hiked through half of America’s national parks, collecting stories from the plains, pines, peaks, and ponds, like a guy stockpiling inspiration during his recovery. Grit, humor, and high-stakes journeys run through his young adult dystopian apocalyptic fantasy novels, where surviving the end of the world as you know it is just another Tuesday. He also creates 3D animation and award-winning screenplays, because with hypergraphia, one creative lane is never enough.
If you’re into irreverent science fiction that blends multiple genres, welcome to his grit-with-wit universe.