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Flawless

Space is such a drag...

by J. Scott Coatsworth

In Space, No One Can Hear You Sing …

Grayson Eck's life is a drag, in all the best possible ways. He's perfectly happy working in the belt alone as a wildcatter, prospecting asteroids by … well, not exactly by day.

At night, he transforms into the Inner System's most famous Valeriana Storm — a secret identity that even his closest friends and family don't know about.

When someone tries to steal one of Greyson's mining scores, he has half a mind to just toss the guy off his rock and into open space. But that all changes when he discovers the stranger's identity — and that he knows Greyson's secret.

Now he's being chased by a pirate, and has to decide what to do with the apparent thief while also putting on his show.

What's a space drag queen to do?

Published:
Publisher: Water Dragon Publishing
Cover Artists:
J. Scott Coatsworth, Kelley York

Genres:
Sci Fi, Sci Fi - Comedy, Sci Fi - Frontier, Sci Fi - Hard Sci Fi, Sci Fi - Hopepunk, Sci Fi - LGBTQ+, Sci Fi - Piratepunk

Tags:
author - american, format - book, format - kindle, format - paperback, format - short stories, format - short story <15K, identity - gay, what - condition - ptsd, what - topic - drag, what - topic - music, where - Mars, where - spaceship, who - occupation - asteroid miner, who - occupation - drag queen, who - occupation - spaceship captain

Tropes: Asteroid Miner, I Am Your Father, Redemption Arc, Space Pirates, Space Smugglers
Word Count: 13200
Setting: Asteroid Belt, Open Space
Languages Available: English
Tropes: Asteroid Miner, I Am Your Father, Redemption Arc, Space Pirates, Space Smugglers
Word Count: 13200
Setting: Asteroid Belt, Open Space
Languages Available: English
Excerpt:

About the Author

Scott lives with his husband of 25 years in a leafy Sacramento, California suburb, in a little yellow house with a brick fireplace and a couple pink flamingoes out front. He has always inhabited the space between the here and now and the what could be. Indoctrinated into fantasy and sci fi by his mother at the tender age of nine, he devoured her library. But as he grew up and read the golden age classics and more modern works as well, he began to wonder where all the people like him were.

After he came out at twenty three, he decided that it was time to create the kinds of stories he couldn’t find at Waldenbooks. If there weren’t many gay characters in his favorite genres, he would reimagine them himself, populating them with a diverse universe of characters. He would subvert them and remake them to his own ends. And if he was lucky enough, someone else would want to read the things he wrote.

His friends say Scott’s brain works a little differently – he sees relationships between things that others miss, and gets more done in a day than most folks manage in a week. Although he was born an introvert, he learned to reach outside himself and connect with others like him.

Scott writes stories that subvert expectations, that seek to transform traditional sci fi, fantasy, and contemporary worlds into something new and unexpected. He also runs both Queer Sci Fi and QueeRomance Ink with his husband Mark, sites that bring people like them together to promote and celebrate fiction that reflects their own reality.

His writing, whether romance or genre fiction (or a little bit of both) brings a queer energy to his stories, infusing them with love, beauty and power and making them soar. He imagines a world that could be, and in the process, maybe changes the world that is, just a little.

He was recognized as one of the top new gay authors in the 2017 Rainbow Awards, and his debut novel “Skythane” received two awards and an honorable mention.

He runs Queer Sci Fi, QueeRomance Ink, and Other Worlds Ink with Mark, and is a full member of the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America (SFWA).

You can find him at Goodreads here, on Amazon here, on QueeRomance Ink here, and on Facebook here.