About
Genre: Sci-Fi, Espionage
Themes: Honor, Loyalty, Truth
Pages: 291
Words: 76,946
The Halferne Perfidy was my first failed NoNoWriMo attempt. As mentioned, it we merely intended as a short-story backstory for one character in the other series, but has been tweaked and expanded into a separate, self-contained story with additional characters and ideas added over the years. I consider the genre to be, half-jokingly, all my favorite literary things into one book: secret agents vs ninjas in space — Jack Higgins meets Chang Cheh meets Elizabeth Moon. I always said the subgenre of “contemporary pulp sci-fi/espionage/wuxia” was wide open and begging to be invented. Of course, I now see why there isn’t a lot of that, and I admit the concept suffers from a few unforseen obstacles that I may or may not have finally worked out in this revised draft five years later.
Back Cover Blurb
The planet Notosia is a failed experiment and a collapsed society; a remote world with no allies located far off the Upeastern arm of the interstellar travel lanes. No one in their right mind would go there unless they were desperate.
Industrialist Sylvester Locke is one of the richest, most powerful men in the galaxy. For the past several months, he has been rumored to be traveling from system to system, attempting to sell a significant piece of new technology.
A trail of bodies left behind in Locke’s wake leads to Notosia and has caught the attention of Division 5, the Sol Directorate’s intelligence agency. Their operative is tasked with uncovering the secrets of this revolutionary new technology and keeping it out of the hands of the terrorists, gangsters, and corrupt government warlords that make up most of Notosia’s population.
This mission would be difficult under the best of circumstances, even before the addition of a mysterious ninja assassin and his handler, a 20-year-old girl whose exact role, loyalties, and state of mind are a complete mystery, even on a world that thrives in chaos.
Read the Latest Draft
Playlist I Listened to While Writing It
Revision History
| NaNo Draft | First 23K words (NaNoWriMo 2017) | November 2017 |
| Draft 0 | First Speed Draft | September 2024 |
| Draft 1 | Grammarly Draft | October 2024 |
| Draft 2 | Alpha Reader Draft – Tweak ending, minor clarifications, minor plot holes corrected | February 2025 |
| Draft 2.1 | Rewrite Klein, add Prudence, spread out Clay’s backstory, extra clarity on the reveals | August 2025 |
Current Issues Being Worked On
- Proper-Noun Dump in Chapter 1 is too much.
- More theme differentiation in antagonists
- More stakes and emotional interior for Clay
- Trim more exposition in Chapter 1
- Fix repeated filler words
