Fun Facts for “From Rescue to Love”

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.