The Chronicles of Deneb Series

 

 

The Chronicles of Deneb Series

by Zanne Raby

GENRE: Science Fiction/Space Opera

The Chronicles of Deneb is a science-fiction/ space opera series set in the near future. The year is 2080 CE. The world is dying. Get ready to travel into the future to a time when nothing is certain.   Where the science behind climate change was ignored, leading to drought and famine plaguing an already overpopulated globe. Massive waves of refugees stream across the planet, seeking sanctuary. Where terrorist groups have joined forces with biohackers to develop a deadly bio-engineered disease that marches across the continents like a conquering army, leaving millions dead in its murderous swathe.

Meanwhile, some of the best and brightest minds on the planet are feverishly at work - constructing gigantic Space Arks to shuttle hundreds of thousands of people to a colony on Mars.  And it seems like there’s more good news: world leaders announce that a vaccine is ready. It’s all good; it’s all returning to normal.

But the truth is very different. In THE FLIGHT OF THE MAYFLOWER, the first novel in The Chronicles of Deneb, Dr. Daniel Radu – project manager for NASA’s Space Ark Mayflower – uncovers a global conspiracy of immense proportions. But Daniel cooks up a scheme of  his own.  Joined by a team of global experts, he and his colleagues brace themselves for a journey of a lifetime as they trek across the galaxy in a quest for survival.

Mayhem follows the Mayflower in the second book of The Chronicles of Deneb series, DESCENT INTO DARKNESS. Journey along with the crew of the Space Ark Mayflower as they adapt to their new home on the planet Deneb. But along with their struggle to integrate into an alien culture, a new battle sweeps across the planet with the arrival of the human-transmitted Chimera bactovirus, bringing war and fanning the flames of racial intolerance. With a bloody conflict now raging across the planet, the crew of the Mayflower is split between the two factions and embroiled in the chaos and destruction.

FIRES OF FURY is the third installment in The Chronicles of Deneb. Will the survivors of the Space Ark Mayflower find their way when cultures clash and the fires of fury threaten to consume their lives? Now masquerading as citizens of the Collective, the Mayflower crew has a new reason to fear. With the end of the Second Denebian War, Wesselan’s General Pallav Kóbor and his astrophysicist wife, Dr. Tara Kóbor, have high hopes that life will return to normal on Deneb7. Yet nothing can be further from the truth.In a diabolical plot to erase the scars left by the Second Denebian War, warlord turned Wessel Head of State Gomalan unleashes a fiendish scheme to heal his nation’s wounds, while his top soldier, General Ravenna, falls under the spell of a seductive Fyjer agent intent on crushing their ambitions. Dragged into a brutal reality of terror and intrigue, can the Kóbors and warbird ace Fynn Vogel remain unscathed, or will the flames consume them and all that is evil on Deneb-7?

Excerpt:

A willowy brunette with shining brown eyes burst from the shadows, almost scaring Daniel out of his skin. “Tara,” he gasped, trying to quiet his heart. “What the hell? The president’s due here any second.” Dr. Tara Kóbor, the Nobel-prize winning astrophysicist who had discovered the find of the century – an Earth-like planet cuddled up in the Goldilocks zone of its star – was wearing a grin as wide as the Grand Canyon.

“You heard the news, right? I mean, the broadcasts are on fire. They’ve developed a vaccine! And whoever’s on the first shuttle flight is top priority. That means…”

He could hear heavy footsteps pounding on the hangar floor: time to play show and tell. Taking her by the shoulder, Daniel shepherded his friend to the bulkhead door. “It means you gotta get outta here. We’ll celebrate later,” he promised.

Just then, a bevy of bodyguards swooped in, all earpieces and dark glasses, and Daniel stood back as they robotically carried out their duties. No need really, NASA’s Chief of Security had seen to that. Out of the corner of his eye, Daniel spotted Tara’s husband, Lt-Col Pallav Kóbor, dwarfing the president’s team as he walked them through the hangar. He could hear the click click click of the cameras as the president approached with his staff trailing behind like good little shadows.

Show time, he mumbled to himself, wiping the sweat from his palms on his cobalt-blue NASA tunic.

About the Author:

SHORT VERSION

Zanne Raby is a military veteran, having served for over three decades across North America, Europe and the Middle East.  Passionate about all things space, her novels weave fast-paced, team-oriented environments into character-based science fiction.  Currently residing in a small town on the shores of Georgian Bay, Ontario, Zanne enjoys hiking, gardening and Sudoku.

LONG VERSION

Since the days of the Napoleonic War, there has always been a member of Zanne’s family in uniform.  Choosing to follow in the footsteps of her ancestors, Zanne joined the Canadian Armed Forces in 1980, and was selected to attend the Royal Military College of Canada – the first year that women were accepted into that prestigious academy of learning.  After graduation, she studied to become a Transportation and Movements Officer in the Royal Canadian Air Force.

During a career spanning 38 years, some of the most memorable experiences involved command of 8 Mission Support Squadron as part of Joint Task Force Afghanistan, leading a study on support to the Canadian Arctic involving several trips to Northern Canada, including Canadian Forces Station Alert (the most northern settlement in the world), a three-year tour with NATO at Joint Force Command Brunssum, a deployment as the NATO Liaison Officer to United States Central Command, and finally a nomination as the Deputy Commander for the Canadian Forces Recruiting Group.

After hanging up the uniform and putting away the combat boots, Zanne bought a small acreage in Central Ontario and designed her own house.  With a cozy office overlooking the shores of Georgian Bay, she decided to pursue her life-long ambition:  to become an author.  Enough of the reports and returns that littered her desk over her career, now she could turn her attention to unleashing the creativity that had taken a back seat.  The time had come to shake the dust off begin a new career.  The winds of change had called. 

Zanne is currently crafting The Chronicles of Deneb, a sci-fi space opera series that will take the reader from a dystopian earth on a voyage across the universe in search of a safe haven.  But trouble is in store for them when the planet they land on is anything but the sanctuary they sought.

When not behind the keyboard, Zanne enjoys travel, photography, hiking, and gardening.  And always, a good story to pass the time.

 

Q&A With the Author

What did you enjoy most about writing this book?

In all three novels of the series The Chronicles of Deneb, I have to do a bit of research. In the first novel, The Flight of the Mayflower, which I wrote in 2018, I was writing a scene where the Space Ark Mayflower passes through a wormhole. That got me reading about transverable Einstein-Rosen bridges, that have never been shown to exist in reality, but if it was good enough for Einstein, who am I to argue? While I was writing about a wormhole, I was rather lucky since at that time, an image of the first black hole was released. In my second novel, Descent into Darkness, I watched a ton of clips of fighter jets and movies as well as reading narratives of actual combat pilots, in order to write the scenes where my warbird ace, Fynn Vogel, takes on the enemy pilots. Fires of Fury, the third novel in the series, deals with labour camps. Not nice places by far, but to design the camps I embarked on a virtual tour of some of the worst prisons on the face of the planet. 

All that to say, what I enjoy most about writing is doing the research. It brings me closer to the story and I learn the most amazing things while I’m at it!

Do you have any other books you are working on that you can tell us about?

I’m currently working on the fourth novel in the series, which I’m planning to name Peril in Paradise. While the third book deals almost exclusively with the problems that the humans are facing on the alien planet Deneb7, the fourth novel will switch over to the planet Cepheus9. Dr. Daniel Radu, once the project manager of the Space Ark Mayflower and the impetus for leaving Earth, will take centre stage along with his supervisor, Dr. Meera. The two are exobotanists and they get themselves sent across the Interstellar Collective for Peace and Security where they help other planets deal with various disasters. But along the way, there’s more than simple work that transpires. 

Can you tell us about what you have planned for the future?

The series ‘The Chronicles of Deneb’ takes place over a thirty year period. As the adults from the first few books age, the younger passengers from the Space Ark Mayflower, as well as some of the local Denebian and Cepheusian humanoids, begin to take on more and more significance. Both Fires of Fury and Peril in Paradise have cliff hanger endings, which will be resolve up in the fifth book in the series, Spirits of Steel. 

Once this series is completed (in several more novels… I really am enjoying Deneb!), I have a very different novel waiting in the wings that deals with a natural disaster occurring in a remote area of the Arctic. Think mystery, murder, and of course, a cover up by a multinational corporation. Lots of fun!

How long have you been writing?

I believe most authors have been writing since they were children, and I’m no different. I began to write while in grade school and continued throughout my years at high school. When I entered the work force after university, my writing took a bit of a vacation. I still wrote; I had many ideas for a novel, but I was never able to complete any of my work due to the nature of my job. After I retired from the Air Force in 2018, I finally decided to follow my dreams and become an author. I’ve been writing now for four years and I’m loving it.

Anything more you would like to say to your readers and fans?

I love to travel. Once I have an idea of where I want to go, I can spend months researching the best hiking trails, the most fascinating historical sites, and unique places to visit (if there is anything unique left in this global world of ours). Travel now has become more difficult than it was when I was younger. Getting to the airport and the long wait before emplaning can be as long as a transatlantic flight since I live way off the beaten path. Flying can be uncomfortable and stressful, so once when I was returning to Canada from Europe, I took the Queen Mary 2 ocean liner across the Atlantic. That was a fascinating trip, and I thought of how lucky I was compared to my ancestors who came to North America on timber ships in the mid 1800s. Those ships, by the way, were also called coffin ships: crowded, disease ridden with the owners providing as little food and water as legally possible. So I consider myself lucky to be crammed in on a plane and able to get across the ocean in a day’s travel. 

But although I love travel and I write sci-fi, I don’t think that I would want to cross the galaxy in a starship on course for a distant planet. Our Earth is a wonderous place, and the more I read about the universe and exoplanets, the more I believe that we are very fortunate indeed. This is why I have developed Dr. Daniel Radu, the one time astronautical engineer, into an exobotanist on his new home planet, for along with Dr. Meera, the two tackle ecological problems on planets belonging to the Interstellar Collective for Peace and Security. It is also my belief that by working with nature, instead of against it, our planet stands a good chance of remaining a beautiful, wonderous place for not only humanity, but all of the plants and animals that reside on its surface.

And lastly, I would give my eye teeth to fly with warbird ace Fynn Vogel in his Stryker Skykiller!

 

LINKS

PRESSKIT: https://bit.ly/3U4OenB

WEBSITE:  https://www.zanneraby.com/

FACEBOOK: https://www.facebook.com/zanne.raby

LINKEDIN: https://www.linkedin.com/in/zanne-raby-2b4a9b1bb/

INSTAGRAM: https://www.instagram.com/zanne_raby/

PURCHASE VIA: https://ridgecrestbooks.com/ AND https://amzn.to/3fiZy0m

GIVEAWAY

Zanne Raby will be awarding a $25 Amazon/BN GC to a randomly drawn winner via rafflecopter during the tour.

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