viridian series – The Viridian System series

9 August, 20257 August, 2025

The Quest for Orichalcum – out Tuesday! #QuestforOh #scifi #booksky

The work is done, the wait is over… The Quest for Orichalcum is ready to be published on Tuesday, on all platforms including (subject to distributor actions) as a softcover book.

The ebook has a sparkly modern cover, as do the Viridian series trilogy, but the softcover keeps its original cover (with an amended subtitle) in line with the style of the others.

The Quest for Orichalcum: an Asteroid Miners’ Memoir

by Jemima Pett

Hang out with your favourite asteroid miners, discovering how they met, their adventures and misadventures, and the truth behind the rumours.

How did Pete Garcia and Lars Nilsson meet? What adventures did they have before they reached the Viridium System? Did Lars really murder someone? Is Pete invincible at arm-wrestling? Have either ever really loved someone? Did luck or fate make them the best orichalcum miners in the galaxy?

All these questions are addressed in the Quest for Orichalcum, a memoir of your favourite asteroid miners, from before the days when instacomms enabled real connectivity through the galaxy. Before anyone knew what orichalcum was, or could do for civilisations throughout the universe. This is a gathering of tales of the men, their women, their extracurricular activities, disasters, deaths, murders, and surfing. And all before anyone but the people of Corsair had ever heard of the Perihelix.

This memoir of Big Pete and the Swede is a prequel to the Viridian System series.

Buying links

~~Amazon~~ ~~Apple iTunes~~ ~~B&N~~ ~~Kobo~~ ~~Smashwords~~

Enter the Giveaway

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The Blog Tour: including excerpts and quotes…

18 July Willowdot

30 July Ronel Janse Van Vuuren

1 August Noelle Granger – Sayling Away

4 August Rebecca Douglass

6 August Alex J Cavanaugh; Fundy Blue

7 August Sally Cronin – Smorgasbord

9 August The Viridian System series

12 August Jemima Pett, Author (publication day)

18 August Natalie Aguirre – Literary Rambles

7 August, 20257 August, 2025

New Covers for the ebooks

The cover for The Quest For Orichalcum didn’t cut the mustard. Something new and jazzy was needed.

And after that, the main series needed a makeover too!

So here are the new ebooks. The softcover books will stay as they were, for now.

The Quest for Orichalcum is published on 12th August. All the razzmatazz is happening on jemimapett.com

27 May, 202525 May, 2025

The Quest for… begins #booksky #QuestforOh

The Quest for Orichalcum, in fact. I haven’t been able to stop tinkering with it now it’s more or less finished.

I need to do a blurb… something along the lines of:

How did Big Pete and the Swede meet? How did they get to be so rich? And were they always successful with women? What adventures did they have before they reached the Viridium System?
All these questions are addressed in the Quest for Orichalcum, a biography, or memoir, of your favourite asteroid miners, from before the days when instacomms enabled real connectivity through the galaxy. Before anyone knew what orichalcum was, or could do for civilisations throughout the universe.
A gathering of tales of the men, their women, their extracurricular activities, disasters, deaths, murders, and surfing. And all before anyone but the people of Corsair had ever heard of the Perihelix.
draft blurb, The Quest for Orichalcum by Jemima Pett © 2025

Yes, I think that might be okay, as a blurb. I also developed a draft cover, but now I’ve finished tweaking it, so here’s the final version!

ARCs are now available, if you’d like to review it.

13 May, 202513 May, 2025

Early Days – Pete & Lars update #booksky

Victor Habbick Visions/Space Science Library

Since the December update, I’ve been busy with the project with various names, but mostly subtitled something like – Pete & the Swede, the Early Years.

Main edits

January saw me working solidly on it, with feedback from my beta readers creating a whole new issue – that of making sure Lars got as much say in the story as Pete. I don’t know why I thought of the project as mostly Pete’s to tell, but now it covers Lars’s working life as thoroughly as it does Pete’s.

There are still parts of their very early lives that only exist as flashbacks and obscure references. I think taking them right back to their childhood is unnecessary. But for both of them it has a bearing on their view of themselves, although Pete is not self-conscious, in stark contrast to Lars.

Lars relaxes

“Food would be great.” Pete stood up, only to sit down again as [Lars] started to change from his coverall to shirt and pants. ‘Is changing for meals obligatory?”
“Only if you’ve been doing something odorous.”
Viridian series prequel (c) J M Pett 2025

One of the subtle things I did was to make Lars even stiffer in the beginning, by having him speak in over-formal phrasing, or just more obscure words. He was brought up in a very strict and hierachical system, like the British Upper Class (or Charles Emerson Winchester IV). Pete’s upbringing was free and easy, despite the invasion of his planet by the Imperium. Lars gradually transitions during college, and talks like most people thanks to Pete’s influence. One thing I find difficult is elaborating on Pete’s background without repeating what is already out there in Curved Space to Corsair.

I enjoyed all their adventures with girls, though. Yes, they did meet girls before they encountered Maggie, Dolores and Aramintha on Pleasant Valley! But as research students who went on into mining (mainly because orichalcum had just been discovered, and was desperately needed), they did not get too many opportunities to build relationships with women. I think Pete did better overall than Lars (or so Lars thinks) but that probably won’t surprise you.

Wordcount, early copies… and a title

The book is currently sitting at just under 90,000 words, which is about the same as the rest of the trilogy. I’m nearing the time to decide on publication strategy, and I don’t at the moment think it’ll come out in paperback. Most of my Viridian series sales are ebooks, and I am picking up sales after my book fairs, so at least some people like what they see.

If you’re a fan of the series, and would like a review copy when it’s finished, email me at my name with a dot between my first name and surname at btinternet.com. It would be good to know which of the books you’ve reviewed, and where you might talk about it, if you ask!

As for a title…. I’m leaning towards The Quest for Orichalcum at present. Having already done a Z title, a Q seems like a good idea to attract reading challenge fans!

I suppose I’d better start thinking about a cover…

4 November, 20224 November, 2022

The Viridian System Series Box Set is now on sale at Smashwords

The regular price is $11.99, which is a $3 discount on the individual book costs.

It launches everywhere except Amazon on November 10th.

Why a box set?

I was thinking of Christmas presents, and the number of people who pass my stall at the craft fairs saying they only read ebooks. I have ebooks!

So making this in an attractive gift set seemed like a good thing to do.

I ended up working all night on it to get it done for the start of November! I thought I’d formatted them all the same – but no. And irritatingly, applying a style across the file did not change the fonts on the italic parts. And as you probably know, what with spaceship names and telepathic conversations, I had a lot of italic parts!

But it’s safely done, and live on Smashwords as a pre-sale. It is on pre-order at other places, and will launch on November 10th. These are the permanent links:

Smashwords ~~~ Apple ~~~ B&N ~~~ Gardners ~~~ Kobobooks ~~~ Scribd ~~~ Odilo

Gift cards and Bookmarks

I’ve now made Gift Cards to go into the stall kit. They have the Smashwords link and a coupon code inside them. The buyer pays me, and the coupon gives the recipient a free ebook. Or three, in this case.

I’ve had these for the Princelings series for years, but only sold two. Maybe their time has come. And I’ve done one for my Dad’s memoirs, White Water Landings, which is also a popular seller.

Also new for the Christmas rush at my book fairs are new bookmarks featuring the Viridian series. I’ll be in Lyndhurst, Romsey (both Hampshire) and Salisbury (Wiltshire) on several dates before Christmas, so check my blog for details. Salisbury’s Christmas market is especially good, and there’ll probably be carols in the cathedral if you time it right.

17 October, 202218 April, 2022

Dear Reader, Love Author

The last stop in the blog tour last March was this one, at a site simply called Dear Reader, Love Author.

Dear Reader, Love Jemima Pett

Dear Reader,

When I’m talking to people at book shows, scifi gets a curious reaction. Some simply dismiss it out of hand, some love all the shoot-em-up high-tech space-wars stuff in it, and others look for something more in it.

I’m not really into the shoot-em-up stuff, but I do love space ships. But what I love even more are people, personalities, and the possibilities in creating alien entities. People who develop on planets unlike our earth are unlikely to have the same physical or emotional reactions as ourselves. If they are part of a human diaspora, then they might—but the culture the original settlers bring with them will alter their viewpoints.

If you think how many and varied our cultures on earth are now, how much more wonderful would it be out in the galaxy?

It’s really an ecology question. Why do creatures evolve as they do? What functions do their forms provide, and why so different from something else in the same niche? Are opposable thumbs really essential for grasping tools? How does one categorise ‘intelligence’ of wildly different forms?

That’s one reason I admire author Becky Chambers so much. Her worlds, her cultures, her people… her AIs growing sentient… all wonderful, and logical developments. It gets difficult to write scifi that has no influence from the authors I admire most.

So I settled on an out-of-the-way star system that is the main source of something the galaxy needs for instantaneous communication. One of the protagonists talks to the trees, and wonders what lifeforms were destroyed when they settled the planet. The Viridian System series stems from there. Some people thrown together, in institutional arrangements that most of them hate. A chance for an extended chase in search of a mythical sword, followed by a space accident that results in meeting aliens with a common goal.

And now the last in the series. People cut off from their loved ones in a galactic disaster. I didn’t realise when I was writing it, but it’s really about people adjusting to isolation, to changes to their customary freedoms, and rediscovering self-sufficiency. Mostly, it’s about missing loved ones.

It’s a mystery adventure set in another solar system, but you may find something of your own world that seems familiar.

I hope you enjoy it.

love,

Jemima Pett

~~~~

I was really pleased with this. It started me thinking of something – and then Patricia Josephine stepped in for an interview “Why Do I Write Science Fiction.?” That stumped me for days. You can see what I said on her blog!

Next time… the last one. It’s the third of the 10 Things… written with tongue firmly in cheek.

22 February, 202121 February, 2021

I’ve started writing Zanzibar’s Rings! #viridianseries

Zanzibar’s Rings is the third and probably final book in the series. “Probably’ because the intention is for everything to come together and end in a final situation. But with my way of working, some other grand idea might turn up and insert something else which ends up needing another final book!

Zanzibar’s plan

My plan is to write it between now and the end of April, which is a target of only around 1000 words a day, and I generally write 2-3000 a day when I’m working on a book. It kind of takes over my brain, and I live in the story. It helps me remember what I’m doing and who’s doing what! So, unless I have a lot of changes to make to another book currently with beta readers, I should finish by the end of April.

But then the hard work starts. The checking, finding plot holes, double checking that everything follows on logically, that nobody is sent off to do something and never comes back (and nobody notices). Or comes back having done something else entirely but the thing they were to do has magically happened. These things can be notoriously difficult even for the best of editors. One faux pas slipped through the final editing of one of my other recent books: it’s easy to change the ebook, but very difficult to change the paperback!

Target for publishing

If all goes well, it might be nearly ready by Christmas. But that’s a really bad time to bring out a new book so it’s more likely to be targeted at February or March 2022. I hope that will give me plenty of time to give the series a boost, and get more interest going.

It’s always good to get new viewpoints on a series, so if you’ve read either or both of the first two, and would like to be a beta reader, please let me know.

Would you like a sneak peak at the current first line (I told you it’s not a kids series!)

Lars Nilsson, sometimes known as the Swede, ambled into the kitchen, scratching his groin and yawning.

It might be cut, so don’t be surprised if it changes.

Short Stories

Meanwhile, I’m launching a series of flash fiction books, just 30,000 words or so for each volume, between the beginning of March and July. There’s plenty of fantasy and weird domestic science fiction in it, but very little set in space. Well, one or two. Mainly alien species 🙂 Look out for more details on Jemima’s blog on March 3rd, or click the badge for a special offer (expires end of 3rd March).

I also have some stand alone Viridian short stories roaming around. I may do a new version of the Viridian System Sampler, or just a second volume, because these are mainly backstory for the characters. But that’s for 2023, probably!

3 May, 20197 August, 2020

Special offer on SF&F 4-5 May 2019 – including Curved Space to Corsair!

Curved Space to Corsair, book 2 of the Viridian System series, is on sale this weekend only!

It’s part of the Science Fiction & Fantasy Promotion, with many great ebooks from all aspects of science fiction and fantasy – and ALL FOR 99c, OR LESS.

Head over to Patty Jansen’s special promotion, and take up many of these great special offers.

Curved Space to Corsair

by Jemima Pett

Dolores is training to qualify as a space pilot. Pete has had a call to his home planet, Corsair, to save them from disaster, so they set off in that direction to give Dolores more space hours, only to slight error of course which leaves them in a horrible mess. Meanwhile the Imperium declares war on the Federation, while a little personal business by one of the senators leads him off in the direction of the Viridian System to start a canny land grab.

Approx 90k words; guideline – 18+

Links for Apple, Amazon, Nook, Kobo, and Smashwords!

30 July, 201628 July, 2016

July has flown by

Well, that’s what happens when you go to Summer Camp.

I’ve been at Camp NaNoWriMo again, but this time working on my older children’s fantasy series, The Princelings of the East. I started that as a trilogy, thought it would finish at book 8, and is now set to finish at book 10, since I’ve completed the first drafts of books 7 and 8 at Camp. Well, 8 needs a few more days…

So where does this leave the Viridian series?

My next project is to thoroughly edit my revised Perihelix and send it to my editor. Because of the workload I now have one in the UK for the Viridian series and my original US editor for the Princelings series. I hope that will work well. Once Perihelix has gone I can work on the second draft of Curved Space to Corsair. Nobody commented on that title, so I hope it works. There isn’t another book called that, anyway.

While I’ve been at Camp there have been some character interviews on my blog. You can check them here:

Big Pete and the Swede (15th July)
Zito (5th August)

The other thing I have to do is fix the problem with my mailing list. You’ll know when I’ve done it 🙂

17 May, 201619 June, 2016

The Perihelix is withdrawn

I received further independent reviews with good feedback over the Perihelix’s dodgy start, and some other comments about characters and plot jumps. So, I consulted my publisher, and we’ve suspended it from sale as of today. I don’t want it to carry on getting 2 and 3 star reviews. Obviously I want to make it the best book I can. And as the start of a series, it ought to be a real ‘read me’ book, getting only 4s and 5s. I’ll be revising it and putting it through the editing process once more to bring out a second edition in due course.

If you have an ecopy of the Perihelix, you will be able to update to the second edition free. If you have a paperback, make sure you’re on the mailing list of news of coupons and vouchers.