My fall themed short story Harvest Moons, takes place on planet Celstar, open to farming immigrants. This was my first leap into this world and Harvest Moons is a bit light on the external conflict, though other stories will have plenty.
This story is probably more a sci-fi fantasy than straight sci-fi romance.
In my world:
Terra expanded to other planets, joined in a political body called the Terran Confederation.
In the past, several planets experimented with human DNA and created slave classes. One type is a Shimmer--humans who shimmer/shift into animal shape. The other is a Synth, a synthetic human, made for different purposes--soldiers, sex workers, entertainers.
In the past the Confederacy fought a war, The Shimmer Wars, and DNA experimentation is now illegal in the Confederation.
Polly, my widowed heroine, has Synth blood--some Synths could conceive and produce part human offspring. Being Synth has legal implications, and Polly has 'passed' all her life. She also owns two small Synth girls, who she treats like her children, purchased on Jiang, a planet outside the Confederation.
The area where she farms, the Mid-territory, is a grassland of rolling plains. Most of the settlers in her area are Shimmers, who shift to horse. They tend to stick to their clans.
Celstar had a native population, the Skalzi. It is a very small population and there is speculation that the Skalzi are immigrants just as the Terrans are. The natives are migrants, following herds along a wide brush forest call the Corridor.
Blurb
With the death of her no-account husband, Polly is the sole owner of a farm steading on the planet Celstar. She is determined to hold the steading and make a life for herself and two Synth children in her care. Her nearest neighbor, widower Fallon Verdad, is the big landowner in the territory and also her local Councilman. Like most of the other settlers, Fallon is a Shimmer, a horse shifter, while Polly is human—well, mostly human. Their attraction to each other is electric and hard to deny. An affair would lead to scandal in this conservative community. Scandal is the last thing Polly needs.
Sci-fi space western romance, futuristic, short story.
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When are you going to write more on the Love on the space Frontier series? I just finished Harvest Moons and although it was way too short, I thoroughly enjoyed it. I'll be looking forward to more. Smiles, Sue Castle, chasinrainbows2@rocketmail.com
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