Diplomacy's Stepchild

The Dreamsingers' War

106,200 words

It felt so good to be home again...

It took two tumultuous years, but we finally completed the First Accord with the humans. We took honest pride in our achievement, and we were thankful to leave that er'trxxda world behind us.

Triumphant, and dragging our tails, we came home to d'enchia. It wasn't long before we went our separate ways to new careers, new challenges, new headaches, confident that the future of d'enchia-earth relations was secure.

Or so we thought...

Now it can be told! The riotous, uncensored saga of the Ic'nichi diplomatic herd continues; with shocking new revelations, mysterious new aliens, and our first interstellar war - with the humans on our side, fancy that.


This tale picks up six months after the end of the original 'In The Course Of Diplomacy'. The embassy staff have mostly rotated home, and have gone on to new assignments. By odd coincidence, several of them are drawn back to earth on sundry errands just as the humans announce a new First Contact - who warns them of the approach of another, clearly hostile, race. The Ic'nichi and human fleets are far from ready for war, and the scramble begins to put together some sort of coherent defence. As with all good intentions, the result is mayhem, back-beating, political infighting, and general chaos as the Ic'nichi diplomats join in a battle of wits with the human bureaucracy, their own politicians back on d'enchia, and each other...


Author's Comments:

All authors fall in love with their characters, and one of the sad parts of writing a novel is typing out 'The End'. It is a natural tendency for authors to think longingly of sequels, prequels, spin-offs, etc, and I admit I am the worst at that sort of thing. The problem, of course, is that some stories just naturally end at The End. We've all seen the relentless parade of movie sequels, each of them weaker and more gimmicky than the last as the studios push a finite concept to achieve infinite profits. This is especially true in cases where a major character gets killed off: Ripley, from 'Alien', is a good example of the danger of sequeling not wisely but too well.

I hold a special affection for my Ic'nichi, and being the weak, self-indulgent soul that I am, I started conjuring sequel ideas before I even finished the first draft of the original story. To my delight (and later dismay) further story ideas started popping up like psychedelic mushrooms. The concept seems to hold endless potential for strong follow-on stories; not something one can presume with even the strongest concepts. I probably have twenty story ideas based on the original 'Diplomacy' characters and themes - and managed to trim them down to a well-rounded trilogy...

...which later sprouted an addendum work, followed by a spin-off story line with three volumes of it's own...


ISBN: 978-0-9851547-0-7

ISBN: 978-0-9851547-1-4

ISBN: 978-0-9851547-2-1

ISBN: 978-0-9851547-3-8

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