Signed copy of The Orphan Ship with free shipping, just in time for Christmas!

If you'd like a signed copy of The Orphan Ship, just send me an email at sterlingrwalker@yahoo.com. Pay the list price of $18.95, and I'll ship the book for free. Books make great Christmas gifts! This is a limited time offer because I don't have many copies, but if I'm ever famous (yeah, right), you'll be glad you have a signed first edition! Merry Christmas, or whatever holiday you celebrate this time of year!

My first book award!

The Orphan Ship has been awarded a 2012 silver Children's Literary Classics award.  www.childrensliteraryclassics.com 

An excerpt from my sequel, The Lost Sheep

        

Blaze lowered his voice as he took a bite of sticky rice. “What did you say to Lorina?”

Marco dropped his gaze to the table. “I told her the orphanage would be a challenge for Captain Shepherd over the next few years.”

“That wouldn’t make her cry,” Jake said. “What are you leaving out?”

Marco was trapped. He couldn’t tell them the rest. “I don’t remember.”

“Liar!” Jake’s right fist was halfway to Marco’s nose before Blaze intervened.

“Stop!” The engineer deflected Jake’s punch with an outstretched arm. “Take it easy!” Blaze lowered his voice. “We all want to pound him, but we need to hear what he has to say first.”

“I’m not going to sit here and listen to lies!” Jake’s face was turning red beneath his tan. “You know what you said to her, so you’d better spit it out!”

Marco could feel his own face heating up. He was starting to shake from a combination of fear and anger. Stay silent and take a pounding, or take a pounding after I tell them? He didn’t care for the limited options.

“They say confession is good for the soul,” Vipul spoke up.

Marco shot the older man a withering glance.

Jake sneered. “Ting doesn’t have a soul.”

That remark did it for Marco; he was livid. “You want a confession, O’Brien? Here it is: I told Lorina someone close to her was going to die!”

There was instant silence at the table. The color drained from Blaze’s face.

Jake appeared to be having an internal battle with his emotions, his mouth working silently but furiously until he roared, “Who! Which of us is going to die? Is it me, or Blaze, or Niyati?”

“Don’t you have a shred of decency?” Blaze asked. “How could you say something like that to her?”

“Who is it!” Jake demanded.

“I don’t know.” Marco’s adrenaline was racing. He’d taken on bigger men than O’Brien, and he was ready to defend himself.

“Liar!” Jake cleared the table with a sweep of his arm, sending plates and food flying across the galley. He reached across the table again and seized Marco’s collar with both hands, yanking him up from his chair. “Tell me!”

“I don’t know!” Marco grabbed Jake’s wrists and pried his grip free. “Get your hands off me!”

Jake shoved him backwards; Marco’s chair seat swiveled and dumped him onto the floor. “I can’t believe we have to work with a psychopath like you!”

Marco was on his feet in an instant. He threw himself at Jake, driving his shoulder into the medic’s abdomen. The two men crashed to the floor between the tables. Marco managed to land a single punch to Jake’s ribs before he felt large hands gripping his shoulders, pulling him off O’Brien.

Book Signing Event

Please join me and local author J. Lloyd Morgan at Line Upon Line bookstore, 441 W. Williams St., Apex, NC, on Saturday, September 29th from 1:00-3:00 pm. J. Lloyd (aka Jason) will be signing copies of his YA fantasy novels The Hidden Sun and The Waxing Moon. I will be signing copies of my YA science fiction novel, The Orphan Ship, which will be marked down to $15 for this event only. Come meet two local LDS authors and pick up some great books for your family.

I was thrilled to read a few exerpts from The Orphan Ship to a good-size crowd at the Lazy Lion bookstore in Fuquay-Varina tonight. My books is now available there.

I just had a great interview with Anne Woodman of The Cary News. Please read her article on The Orphan Ship in The Cary News this weekend. It's always great to have some local PR. The Orphan Ship is available at Wake county public libraries and Quail Ridge Books in Raleigh. You can also order it from one of the links on the right side of this page.

I'm also announcing the formation of a new open-genre writers' group called A Novel Approach. If you're serious about becoming an author, you're welcome to join ANA. We will meet once a month at a mutually-agreed-upon time and location to read and critique each other's work. A writing group can be extremely helpful for feedback and support. I am at a stage with my sequel, The Lost Sheep, where I need some objective feedback from fellow writers. Email me if you're interested, and live in the Raleigh area. ANAwritinggroup@yahoo.com.

I will be at the Holly Springs Farmers Market this Saturday, June 23, to sign and sell copies of The Orphan Ship. For those who don't like to spend money on books, The Orphan Ship can be checked out from Wake County Public Libraries.

Review by J. Lloyd Morgan, author of The Hidden Sun

The Orphan Ship is Sterling R. Walker's first sci-fi book. Spaceships? Check. Humans living on other planets? Check. Advanced technology? Check. In other words, it has all the elements you'd expect in a sci-fi book. However, it also has something that you may not expect: heart.

Walker introduces and develops many wonderful characters that bring this story alive. For example, Danae Shepherd, captain of the spaceship Ishmael, is complex. She struggles between being the rational, take charge captain while at the same time, dealing with a significant loss in her life. And she is only one of several compelling characters in the story.

The book can be enjoyed for the surface level story. There is plenty of action, intrigue, and humor for The Orphan Ship to be satisfying. However, it is the deeper look at poverty, greed and inhumane behaviors which give the book weight--especially when Walker skillfully portrays how children are impacted.

Did I enjoy the book? Yes. Very much so. It was engaging with enough sci-fi gadgets to bring out the inner tech geek in me. But it was the characters and the story than kept me coming back for more.

It's a clean read with no bad language or sex scenes. There is some violence, but it's not graphic and it's needed to fully give the impact this story requires.

While it can be read as a stand-alone book, it leaves the door wide open for one, if not more, books--much to my delight.

Amazon and Barnes & Noble link

http://www.amazon.com/The-Orphan-Ship-Sterling-Walker/dp/1612961029/

http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/the-orphan-ship-sterling-r-walker/1110283966

Review from Bookrated, posted on Amazon.com

"Authors have the ability to open a reader's eyes to the situation around them as well as the situations possible in the future. The trick here is captivating the reader to the point that the severity of the situation resonates to the reader. If you don't care enough about a character to begin with, when the big events happen you kinda just shrug your shoulders and say "eh." However, this is not the case with The Orphan Ship. The characters are woven so intricately together with the plot that it is impossible not to care about them, especially when they begin to see past their own concerns in order to benefit the lives around them. I will always be the first to tell you that fantasy or science fiction stories aren't typically my deal. But the humanistic interest in this book made reading worth it. This is a solid read that isn't just fluff. And for those science-fiction buffs, you are guaranteed an enjoying read."

                                                                                                                                                               ~Mari Jensen for Bookrated.com

The Orphan Ship, from first book review

"Walker [writes with] careful attention to detail and [has an] uncanny ability to create entertaining dialogue. . . . Combining elements of humor and romance with a strong theme of friendship, Walker’s science fiction thriller is well worth reading."

Christopher Ackerman
For Independent Professional Book Reviewers

Another short excerpt from The Orphan Ship

   Jake took out his medical scanner.  “We can’t keep her, Lorina.  Taking in a child isn’t like adopting a stray cat, you know.  We can’t just leave her a bowl of water and a litter box while we go off to work.”

   “Don’t you think I know that?” 

   Jake paused, noting the edge to her tone. “I know you mean well, but we really can’t keep her. There’s a shelter for juveniles near my hospital.  We should take her there.”  He frowned at the readings on the scanner.  “She’s dangerously malnourished, and she’s got intestinal parasites, infected sores --”
   “She’s just a little girl, Jake.  She needs someone to take care of her.  Children shouldn’t have to live like feral animals.  What if she was Catherine?  Would you leave your own niece on the streets?”

   “Don’t you think I know how you feel?” Jake argued. “I see 30 homeless kids at the clinic every night.  Don’t you think I want to do something besides patch them up and send them back to the streets?  I know they need someone to take care of them, but Erik told me most people don’t want to adopt street kids, -- they want babies, preferably newborns.”

   “That’s just wrong, -- when there are so many in need.”

   “I know it is, and I’m sorry, -- but there’s nothing we can do about it, given our small living space and limited budget.”

An excerpt from The Orphan Ship to whet your appetite

  In a few minutes, Danae came to the Port District Employment Center.  She walked in and glanced around; the spartan office was unoccupied.  The place was fully automated, guarded by a single silent android tending the eight terminals.
  Danae stepped over to the nearest terminal and pressed her right thumb to the ID lock.  The screen immediately displayed her DNA record, verifying who she was and confirming that, as a ship’s captain, she had a level-two clearance.  In other words, she could take résumés home to peruse at her leisure.
  "Employees sought?" inquired the terminal in a nasal Boston accent.
  "Med-tech, engineer, navigator, and steward," Danae replied.  Just saying the words brought a lump to her throat.  She swallowed hard and tried to concentrate on the task at hand.
  Her answers appeared on the screen. "Experience requirements?"
  Danae frowned.  She knew what the job market was like nowadays: abysmal. "I’m willing to consider entry-level, but would prefer at least 5,000 hours of shipboard experience."
  Names began to fill the screen.  "Please show me experience levels and criminal records for the engineers."
  The screen complied.  Danae easily narrowed the list to three candidates – none with criminal backgrounds.  She was able to pare down the navigator list to five candidates.  There were eleven potential stewards, but no medics.  That’s odd.  She asked for the list of med-techs again, and the screen gave her just one name, with ‘license revoked’ next to it.
  Wonderful, I can’t even lift off without a medic on board.  Bankruptcy was looking like a real possibility.  "I want to take these résumés back to my ship," she told the terminal.
  Now came the expensive part.  An amount appeared on the screen.  Because she was trying to hire four people, it was steep.  "Please insert credit flash."
  Danae felt like reaching for her gun and blasting the computer into a silent smoking crater, but she reluctantly drew her left hand out of her pocket.  She slid the edge of her thumbnail/credit flash through the scanner groove, and picked up the compact HD that appeared in the slot next to the screen.  "Nice doing business with you," she grumbled.

The Orphan Ship

Stranded 225 million kilometers from home on Mars Station, cousins Jake O’Brien and Lorina Murphy are drawn into a fledgling effort to help the hundreds of abandoned street children who call the station home. Jake becomes a medical apprentice in an outreach clinic, while Lorina volunteers at a juvenile shelter. They soon discover that their efforts may be in vain because something much more serious than poverty plagues Mars Station.

Also stranded on Mars Station, ship’s captain Danae Shepherd faces the difficult task of hiring replacement crew after an alien virus claims the lives of four in her employ, including her husband.  She stumbles upon the same problem that has Jake and Lorina stumped: why are homeless children disappearing without a trace?