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.