A snippet of April #10 freshly mined from the word pit. Rough and unedited as always.

“North America’s only interest in New Las Vegas right now seems to be skimming off whatever easy cut of the winnings are theirs. They don’t withhold for non-citizens, so that’s dried up to almost nothing. There’s no government money coming in the hab, just taxes out. The currency controls and bank regulations aren’t good for business, and nobody wants to do business in USNA dollars. They may just go the way of the Hawaiians,” Diana predicted.

April looked alarmed. “You’re going to make them think we’re exporting revolution!”

“No, no, no… maybe the Hawaiians are exporting a little, but I’m not even a Home citizen. Come to that… I haven’t declared I’m a Hawaiian citizen either. If I have a few friends from Home, that’s my concern. Gunny dropped a few dollars he had laying around losing value at the tables, and Sylvia played a bit too. I know you keep things pretty close to your breast, Kido,” Diana said, holding her hands in close like she had a hand of cards, “and you seem to have sources. “So it might not surprise you to know Eduardo came ahead to get things set up, and we joined him for a little vacation.”

“Muños?” April asked. That did surprise her and she couldn’t keep a poker face. All her ‘sources’ had failed to tell her he’d gone off to New Las Vegas. He hardly ever left Home. She knew Dianna had been out with both Gunny and Eduardo. Silly her, she’d worried that might drive a wedge between Diana and Sylvia, because she’d seen Sylvia with Eduardo a few times at the Fox and Hare, and she liked both of them. She was holding her breath worried Sylvia would give her the boot if she horned in on Eduardo. Finally the obvious hit her between the eyes like a mule kick.

“Yeah,” Diana went on, seemingly oblivious to the fact April hadn’t a clue, “we all get along just fine,” Diana said, meshing her fingers together to show how well. “So we all got a big suite together at the SpaceX place, The Aurum Orbit. It had a hot tub that was damn near big enough to do laps, and it was at a half G like your place. I really like that, because you uh, sleep so well.”

“Sounds delightful but expensive,” April said, composed again.

“Honey, Eduardo pulled the same thing you did at your nightclub. He’s an owner and they all hopped to as soon as we came in and treated us like royalty.”

April had no idea before what sort of business Eduardo dabbled in. She was learning all sorts of things today. “Well, I’m glad you had a good time. You do buy the round-trip ticket I hope, in case the house prevails?”

“None of us are obsessive like your sweetie Heather worries about. Gunny lost the most and that was just a few dollars North American. You might as well lose Monopoly money. The fun thing was Sylvia. She was supposedly there for the unveiling of one of those huge glass panels she does. They put it up a ways inside the main entry so traffic has to flow around it. Eduardo was there but three other guys running the casino were there too, all dressed up and making an event of it. The camera crew arranged everybody to each side facing the camera, real dramatic like, but with a clear shot of the panel when the cloth dropped away.

“Everybody shook hands all around and they had a couple servers pouring champagne off to the side to cap it off, but first the CFO had a flunky standing to the side with a velvet chip try. Instead of chips it had twenty Solars laid in a chip groove and he made show of presenting her fee to Sylvia. I don’t think she wanted it to be so public what they paid her to sculpt it, so she didn’t take the tray or scoop up the coins. She just picked up the end one, balanced it on her thumb like she was going to flip it in the air, and asked him, “Double or nothing?”

April couldn’t help but smile. She could imagine the exact challenging tone Sylvia would take if she were irritated.

“Well he might work for a gambling house, but the fellow was no sport himself,” Diana said. “He looked like his knees were going to give out to take a twenty Solar bet. He declined with an awkward rattled refusal. He didn’t even look at his partners to see if they were game. That’s the kind of story people will tell years later, and it won’t ever serve him well.”

“Except a few bean counters who will nod solemnly in agreement,” April said.

“Lord yes, they are of a kind aren’t they?” Diana agreed. “Eduardo just smiled. He might have gone for it. With the newsies standing right there with the camera it would have been worth it as advertising even if she’d won.”

52 Responses to A snippet of April #10 freshly mined from the word pit. Rough and unedited as always.

  1. 1Stew February 18, 2018 at 8:45 pm #

    The future is always dicey! Thanks for the snipette can’t wait to see what April, Jeff, and Heather are up to or making next!

    • Gary March 18, 2018 at 10:27 pm #

      Did the law series first and just finished nine in April – any chance for next law series I’m having fun connecting the two series

      • Mac March 19, 2018 at 7:51 am #

        April 10 is past 50k words. Some of the people here are guessing things pretty well…
        Family Law 5 isn’t even started. I do have another stand alone that isn’t similar to my other stuff at all. When I get stuck I go write on it.

  2. carlton mckenney February 18, 2018 at 10:46 pm #

    Keeping the shekels in a holding pattern waiting for the release.

  3. Joyce February 19, 2018 at 8:25 am #

    Thank you! Can’t wait!

  4. Matt Malkin February 19, 2018 at 1:32 pm #

    Ooo. Looking forward to a new April book. Sounds good already

  5. Cheryl February 19, 2018 at 4:38 pm #

    Oh great sounds as good as ever. LOVED the snippet

  6. Aimee February 20, 2018 at 12:09 am #

    Cool ! I can’t wait for this to come out!!!

  7. Anonymous February 20, 2018 at 5:55 pm #

    Have I told you lately that you are a wonderful human being.

  8. Eric February 21, 2018 at 5:42 am #

    That there word pit gots some gold in her yet. You just keep adigging there young fella.

  9. nathan February 21, 2018 at 10:53 am #

    YESssssssssssssssss…. thank you.

  10. Ross February 21, 2018 at 1:38 pm #

    Patience may be a virtue, but waiting is torture.

    • Mac February 21, 2018 at 1:55 pm #

      I’m at 17k words – coming along.

      • Ann February 21, 2018 at 6:39 pm #

        If need ‘new’ tech consider high entropy glass and metal alloys.
        In nano amounts (catalysts – new and cheaper) and macro amounts.

        There is a story some ancient roman invented ‘unbreakable’ glass and went to the emperor for funding – he was put to death for creating possible mass glazier unemployment. Typical glass strength is 7 megapascals but glass with no nano bubbles or fractures (perfect glass) is thought to have the strength of 17 megapascals.

  11. Pyo February 25, 2018 at 8:31 am #

    I just hope April will actually do some stuff/be more pro-active again, instead of just buying art or hanging out with people cooking and talking.

    And maybe not nuke Earth for a change? That’d be a real plot twist.

    • Mac February 25, 2018 at 4:48 pm #

      How about nuking somewhere new? 😉

      • Pyo February 26, 2018 at 5:25 am #

        I suppose that I can live with 😉

      • Bill F March 13, 2018 at 11:17 pm #

        The rabbits …. bomb the rabbits .. … hate the buggers they ate the wires on the stereo

    • Anonymous February 26, 2018 at 7:40 pm #

      They do have ftl drive now. They can move around solar system easily (remember the vaseline mines?). And they can move between stars easily, and once they jump to a new star, they can move in that star system easily. Lots of scouting to do…

      Here is the twist. Since ftl drive is a secret, April can not claim all those piloting hours that she spends jumping from star to star, and jumping between planets in the star systems.

      Also. Some people might notice that she is not snooping around because… she is absent…

      • Mac February 26, 2018 at 7:49 pm #

        We’ll touch on a bunch of stuff this book but it’s not going to jump forward 100 years all at once.

        • Anonymous February 27, 2018 at 6:00 am #

          I did not think you would do the 100 year jump.

          You mentioned mining planet moons and outer system planets for:
          1. carbon
          2. helium-3
          3. oxygen may or may not been mentioned
          4. nitrogen was mentioned to be scooped from Earth atmo, but doing it away from USNA would be safer
          5. let us not forget the metals (Au, Ag, Cu, Fe, etc.), you have not talked about mining them out there, but you did brought up their scarcity fairly regularly

          So you can spend significant amount of time just exploring Solar system. If you think about it, the Sceptor (defected Chinese ship) and retrained for space Silverfish crew would make two decent scouting teams since they are both used to cramped ship environments operating in dangerous outside conditions. That is… if they can be trusted with FTL tech.

  12. Ann February 26, 2018 at 7:06 pm #

    If not nuking earth Earth that just leaves Mars or the Moon or one or more of the many mostly unnamed national LEO stations.

    But who would pick a fight with Home or April?

    • Pyo February 27, 2018 at 10:13 am #

      Maybe it’s just a rock in space that needs to be nuked for reasons.

      “Hey, we haven’t caused any massive explosions in quite a while!”
      “Huh. That’s true – by the way, I was wondering what’d happen if we shot [magic stuff] into Jupiter…”
      “Let’s do it. What could possibly go wrong?”

  13. boballab February 26, 2018 at 8:51 pm #

    The scene I would love to see is a face to face meeting between Jan the Human Lie Detector and April all to see if April can do to him what she has done to Chen.

    • Mac February 26, 2018 at 9:19 pm #

      That would require some setup, but well worth doing. No promises but I’ll think on it.

    • aze February 26, 2018 at 10:02 pm #

      April has already served a cup of coffee to Jan in the first book.

      • boballab February 26, 2018 at 11:31 pm #

        Not talking about like where she met him with Easy when getting Jeff’s dad, more like a setting that Eddie had with him. It would be funny watching Jan trying to glean info from April with his leading questions and then have April blurt something out by connecting the dots using Jan’s questions and watching his reaction. We already know that Chen is some parts awed and other parts afraid of April because of her ability and that is due to his training as an intelligence officer and then have it happen to another one…

        After that you would have the one person Jan would not want to talk to because to get info he has to ask questions but that would also give the info away.

    • Anonymous February 27, 2018 at 5:49 am #

      You are forgetting the conversation that Jeff and Jan had when Jeff for looking to hire Kurt. The conversation ended with Jeff telling Jan that if Jan wants maximum utility, he should stop asking Jeff easy questions and go straight to complex ones.

      Also. Leave Jan one “special” power. It makes his character unique instead of being like everyone else. Zak is good example, he pops up once a book, but he does not have anything special about him.

      • Mac February 27, 2018 at 1:38 pm #

        Yep you have the essence of it there.

  14. Doug McMillan February 26, 2018 at 10:15 pm #

    Cool. Can’t wait. Liked new book (series?) too.

  15. Jerry February 27, 2018 at 10:21 pm #

    Several times you mention the lack of copper for making electric motors. But aluminum is abundant on the moon and a lot better than cesium. There were problems using aluminum in house wiring because crimped connections corrode but motors are spot welded. In a vacuum that would not matter. Also not having the motor explode if exposed to air is nice.

    • Mac February 28, 2018 at 7:19 pm #

      Love the droll.

    • John Leggett March 7, 2018 at 9:07 pm #

      I believe it was in “Family Law 3 that they found what was an old April Copper mine. I would also Imagine that there are lots of what ever elements you want to find in the outer Solar System. With a FTL drive this would be one of the best ways to use the drive until more experience is built up.

  16. Ann February 28, 2018 at 6:31 pm #

    There was also the possibility of multi-element superconductors and graphene conductors.

    • Mac February 28, 2018 at 7:20 pm #

      Point.

  17. Jim Ball March 2, 2018 at 7:27 am #

    I’m currently reading Family Law book #4. Is April #10 chronologically before or after Law #4?

    • Mac March 2, 2018 at 7:41 am #

      All the April series books come before Family Law.

      • Jim Ball March 2, 2018 at 4:17 pm #

        Thanks. I’m looking forward to any more Family Law books you may have planned.

  18. Josh March 6, 2018 at 8:40 pm #

    I do wonder is the “Neither Here Nor There” moon people are in the April Universe.

    • Mac March 6, 2018 at 10:22 pm #

      I have had it pointed out that could be explained and work. But I regard it as a much more difficult merge tha the April and Family Law series. It would get very complicated hiding them from each other and making them meet. If one supposed they packed up and went off very far away they could be discovered later, but I’d rather not do the wild hand waving needed.

  19. Ann March 9, 2018 at 9:18 pm #

    Cash machine in NLV casino discussed in last book so possibly also in ISSI and then maybe some other national LEO stations and moon stations to expand the network.

    Or possibly cash machines on some of the larger space ships that move between the LEO stations transporting freight and people.

    • Mac March 11, 2018 at 8:35 pm #

      Interesting idea. I have a variation on it. If they aren’t welcome on a station they could still be on a docked ship and nothing the station could do about it.

  20. John Leggett March 13, 2018 at 6:55 pm #

    Mac, with all the talk about obtaining nitrogen in the earlier books. Now with the new jump drive for moving around the solar system. They could scoop nitrogen from the atmosphere of Titan. Titan had both a denser atmosphere and weaker gravity shoud make this a option.

  21. Jørgen Gangfløt March 14, 2018 at 9:29 am #

    A really fast way around the system and other solar systems will give you access to near unlimited resources, all you need is robotic mining and gathering systems. It will then soon be about hard to get or rare core materials and mass production methods.

    When you have solved problems regarding how to do those things, it will break current economic systems and you can build anything you’d want with time, because you have unlimited raw materials.

    Imagine robotic mining platforms at interesting asteroids that extract and refine everything from the asteroid, then once in a while you jump to each platform and pick up this weeks haul from each platform. As the efficiency of each platform increases and the number of platforms increase you’d need multiple ships going continually from platform to platform just to avoid stockpiling at each platform. But then maybe stockpiling would be a good idea until you add mass production in zero-g up and running.

    Point is, fast travel across a system opens for many many rapid growth possibility, you’d just need the have the means to produce the first few platforms.

    Next you’d need production methods to make the things you need and everything else.

    Once such an option is available and you solve the self sustainable riddle.

    Earth becomes a non-needed entity, a place to visit.

    After awhile, people will find that gravity wells are a pain when you can have everything on a huge space station with easy access to micro-gravity and simulated gravity.

    I guess that we’d see spinning ring based stations with multi-layered rings, one a .05 g and another at 1.0 g, Beyond that we’ll see something like small O’Neill cylinders that act as robotic farms mostly.

    And that’s without adding the multi system bonus that will come when the technology becomes mass accessible.

  22. Ann March 14, 2018 at 8:12 pm #

    M3 has multi layers of spin gravity now from 1 sG to 0 G and three tori. In the Family series Home has three habitats although whether all 3 have 3 tori is unknown. What is more likely to be developed is a kalpana one the 1970s designs aren’t all stable.

    April did suggest moving some stuff deeper into the system (possibly metallic asteroids and icy metallic asteroids) but if they want to keep their capability secret what you suggested should be out of system mining (Proxima, Alpha Centuri A or B or Barnard’s Star or a system with a higher metallic index than Sol).

    • Jørgen Gangfløt March 15, 2018 at 10:22 am #

      To Ann: I know, I love the books.

      Though space is insanely huge and you can hide a lot of crap in the shadow of another object relative to earth.

      And if your installation do not reflect light towards earth, it will also be very hard to find it even relative close to earth.

      The point was that it gives you an easier access to raw materials, how to get it secretly could be a fun adventure to read.

      Though it would be fun to set up a robotic foundry, factory, production facility that could crank out a station much larger than of M3 over a year or two, hidden somewhere around Jupiter (first the shell then the internals). And move everything into a nice visible orbit scaring the everliving daylight out of any that watches the sky.

      I was originally just thinking about the possibilities fast travel around the solar system gives you and how these options could be used.

    • Eric March 21, 2018 at 11:04 pm #

      I think that’s where the bank of Ceres will originate. I predict that it will be a joint venture between Huian, Myat, and Irwin (The bank, Not the asteroid)

      • Mac March 22, 2018 at 10:44 am #

        Now, now… The more you predict the more opportunity I have to alter the script!

  23. Ann March 15, 2018 at 7:36 pm #

    Items in space are generally cold.
    So any energetic activity would be a thermal hot spot.

    There is no stealth in space.

    The one place in the solar system that is safe from earth observation is on the opposite side of the sun from earth as all that can be seen is the sun.

    But we know there is a settlement on Mars and are there sensors in Earth-Sun L2?

    Its safer to assume its all detectable, hence my suggestion of .doing it in another system.

    If sticking to our system claim 16 Psyche and mine it.

    • Jørgen Gangfløt March 17, 2018 at 1:27 pm #

      Yes, the heat buildup or reflections would be a problem if it couldn’t be hidden, not hidden in the regular sence of the word, but rather severely limiting any reflection would make you damn hard to find since space is so effing large. All the planets and moons have a L1-L5 spot and a few of those are always on the other side of the stellar object in relation to earth. But smarter would be to find a spot behind something that lays at an 90 degree on to planetary plane in relations to earth, a spot nobody would care all that much to look at. And add inn a shroud between you and earth that looks like an asteroid.. it should do the trick at leat for a while.

      But that is mostly my thought on it and not proven at all until someone tries it 😉

      • Mac March 19, 2018 at 7:52 am #

        You can stealth things by deflection and absorption too.

        • Ann March 19, 2018 at 7:39 pm #

          You can TRY to stealth something that way but thermodynamic laws say there will be a hotspot eventually and human occupied craft need human temperatures (or individual insulation if chilling the craft).

          How hot, how big a spot that is briefly tweakable and less hot if no humans.

          Also everything in space is orbiting and the more time that passes the less ‘ideal orbit’ locations are ideal.

          Staying between the sun and earth could be useful bur requires an expenditure of energy that may be detectable itself..

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