I want to tell you about a coincidence that isn’t one.
If you’re reading Defenceman: Parallel Ice right now, you just watched Michael Stewart’s season come down to St. Paul in April of 2011. Hold that month in your head for a second, because it matters more than it looks.
The Vallis Defense: Cold Human opens in April 2011. The same month. While Michael is doing what Michael does on the ice, a man on Mars is standing in the cold in front of a flag with a single star ringed by eight smaller ones — a mourning flag — reading eight names off a metal placard, one at a time, the way he does every morning before the work begins. Refusenik’s readers will know exactly where that placard came from and who those names belong to. If you don’t yet, you will.
Two men who have never heard of each other, living through the same spring on two different worlds. That’s not a trick of scheduling. It’s the spine of the whole novel. Cold Human is built as a braid — three lives on one shared calendar — and the calendar is the thing quietly pulling them together while none of them is looking.
The Vallis Defense: Cold Human launches after Defenceman: Parallel Ice concludes, in July 2026. Only two more chapters left.
CCTW