I have written about why I do this, who these three men are, and what they share. This is the plainest post yet. If you are deciding whether to start this novel when it launches, here is what you are weighing.
The Vallis Defense: Cold Human is one story told in three voices. Waylon Eckermann, carried forward from Refusenik's Island Mine. Scott MacIntyre, from Human Phoenix / Man. And Michael Stewart, from Cold Creek's Defenceman series, by way of my own Parallel Ice. The book spans April 2011 to the summer of 2014, across three acts and roughly 90 chapters. One chapter a week, the same schedule you have followed for the past year.
The structure is a braid. Chapters rotate among the three men on a single shared calendar, so you feel what each is living through while the others are in motion. Waylon is building on Mars, Scott is courting Janie, and Michael is a very busy boy. None of them knows the others exist. The calendar does the patient work of drawing them together, and here is the part I love: if you are reading Defenceman: Parallel Ice right now, you are already inside the story. Its closing chapters and the opening of Cold Human happen weeks apart. You will recognize the season.
What drives it is what drove the originals: loyalty, friendship, chosen family, and the slow work of building something that lasts. Sport and science fiction are the setting, not the point. The threats are real, but they stay where they belong, at the edges. They do not define the world, or these men. The story writes toward the light.
What I owe you, my patient and generous readers, is a story that honors the past while taking these characters places some of you, though perhaps not all, will appreciate. That is the risk of any continuation, and I hope you will enjoy the journey. I write this because I love the work, and because I love hearing from you.
If you are new to any of the three worlds, I have prepared a Companion Guide to publish alongside the novel: summaries of the source books and a character and location codex, enough to walk in cold. That said, the originals are better than any guide I could write, so I strongly encourage you to read Cold Creek and Refusenik directly. They are the reason this story exists.
The Vallis Defense: Cold Human launches after Defenceman: Parallel Ice concludes, in July 2026.
CCTW