Factoid One

All of the names of the starships—with the exception of the decommissioned Paxton—in the Unitary Starship Fleet bear the names of streets in the Bronx. Yet another homage to my father.

Factoid Two

Lieutenant Jane Belivet’s last name I took from Rooney Mara’s character in Carol. I love that movie and I particularly love her performance in it. The way she uses her eyes to such great effect throughout the entire film is amazing.

Factoid Three

There are no elements in the periodic table that start with Q. Once I realized that, I knew I could easily come up with a fictional element starting with that letter, and that’s how I ended up with quintium. I then changed it to a mineral.

Factoid Four

Tai’s former flight instructor was named after Tom Skerrit, from Top Gun.

Factoid Five

Photography is a serious hobby of mine, and I’ve studied the works of some of the best photographers in history.

Admiral Ronis was named after one of my favorites, the French photographer Willy Ronis.

Factoid Six

The Lydigs are also named after a street in the Bronx.

Factoid Seven

The planet Aquila is actually named after a woman I worked with several years ago named Akhila. I had such a huge crush on her!

Factoid Eight

My father literally only buys Jamaican rum. He swears it’s the best. And having been to Jamaica, I can’t say I can put up much of an argument against it.

Therefore, when it came to Captain Yarrum gifting a bottle of rum to Lia, Jamaican rum was the only option.

Factoid Nine

Beta reading advantage:

I had originally given Jane Belivet the call sign of Jailbait, due to her youth. And I actually really liked it. However, one of my beta readers convinced me to change it to something else. Her reasoning had a measure of sense to it, even though I was stubborn about not wanting to change it.

Eventually, she made me see sense.

It took me quite a while to settle on a replacement—Rascal—and I managed to do so with less than 48 hours before I had to send the final draft of the manuscript to Amazon.

Factoid Ten

In the story, I mention an architectural style called Googie. That is one of my favorite architectural schools. As an artist, I’ve always been attracted to it shapes and lines, and I wouldn’t mind seeing it return.

Bonus Factoid

I hand wrote the captain’s note to Lia. It is also the first time I’ve included an embedded image into one of my books.

Factoid One

The model number of Jane’s blaster pistol, HM-F9, is simply the markings on two of the keys on my computer’s keyboard.

Factoid Two

The male inspiration for Dr. Philip Zimmer was actor Ed Flanders.

Here’s the weird story of how a 28-year-old woman even knows who Ed Flanders is…

I’m a big fan of Denzel Washington; I have always enjoyed his movies. I found out through my father that Denzel got his big break on a TV show called St. Elsewhere, back in the PSP era (pre-smartphone). It turned out that Hulu had St. Elsewhere available, and so several months ago I started watching it. It’s a good show, if a little dated in certain aspects (for example, no smartphones, and seriously…what was up with women’s hair back then?). In any case, Ed Flanders was in it, and I thought his performance as Dr. Westphall matched how I envisioned Dr. Zimmer.

Factoid Three

Lieutenant Commander Henson—who makes an appearance in the post-epilogue—is named after Matthew Henson, an African-American explorer who accompanied Robert Peary to the geographic North Pole.

Factoid Four

The shuttle which takes Jane down to Pecula Prime is named after Mark Hamill.

Factoid Five

Veronica’s hometown, Coventry, England, is the same as one of my beta readers.

Factoid Six

My father collects watches. I got the name of Dr. Xeric—the linguist featured in Chapter 3—from the name of a brand of watch he has four of.

Factoid Seven

I modeled the robomixers at Cosmic Melons—the juice bar—after the robomixers that mixed all of the cocktails at one particular bar on the latest cruise ship I was on.

Factoid Eight

I started working on this book in the early spring of 2023. It was my intention to release it after Carlsbad 13, “When the Universe Speaks.” However, as I was about halfway through writing “The Andromeda Contact,” I had the sudden realization that I hadn’t released a Cornwall romance since January. Not only that, but fans were asking about when the next Cornwall book would be coming. Therefore, I decided to put the Andromeda manuscript on the back burner because I wanted to keep my Cornwall series fans happy. Therefore, I began working on that story instead. It was also the same time I was working on putting the finishing touches on my 2023 holiday novella, “The Elves Who Wrote the Lesbian Christmas Song.”

Factoid Nine

I envisioned Sergeant Apone, from “Aliens”—one of my favorite movies—when writing Sergeant Racine in the chapter involving the mysterious space station.

Factoid Ten

Jane’s dislike of sour cream on her tacos comes from me. I loathe the stuff, and will not have it anywhere near my food.

Bonus Factoid

The concept of rogue planets has long fascinated me. Just the idea that there could be planet-sized objects—as small as Mercury, or even larger than Jupiter—free-floating in outer space, without being in orbit around a star is incredible—and many have been discovered.

What’s even more fascinating is that on certain such planets, life could theoretically still exist, even without receiving the energy from a host star. Earth, for example, might still be able to harbor life if it should go rogue because the planet’s gravity would allow much of the atmosphere to remain in place. However, any lifeforms remaining on the Earth in that case would have to get their energy from internal sources, and so it would be a difficult existence. Any humans left alive—if that were possible—would have to rely on heat and energy from deep beneath Earth’s surface. Another problem is that our planet would go through significant geological changes once it went rogue, making the sustaining of life that much harder.

We would, in fact, be better off abandoning the planet like the mysterious aliens did in “The Andromeda Contact.”