We’re so pleased to have NineStar Press author J.S. Fields dropping by today to chat about her sci-fi series, Ardulum. We’ve got a great guest post to share with you as well as a giveaway, so be sure to check out all the details below.

Welcome, J.S.!

Journey to the Jungle

The forests of Ardulum

So hey, this is me:

This is me with Dead Man’s Finger, which is a fungus, and also an excellent band name. Not pictured – the jaguar that was stalking me all day.

I write books, but my actual job takes me into forests all over the world. Some, like the forests in Chile and Thailand, I only visit every so often. Some, like the Amazon rainforest of Peru, I see yearly.

I also visit this fine fellow yearly. Peru has the best roasted chicken you will ever eat. I swear this photo is relevant. I see plenty of chickens in the jungle…sometimes they’re even alive.

Forests, of course, play a very big role in the ARDULUM series. We travel from the cool, temperate forests of Neek’s parent’s land, to a more tropical setting in book two when the characters reach Ardulum proper.

Because I tend to write a lot when in the jungle, there are a number of scenes in ARDULUM, especially book two, that involve some, erm, terrifying engagements with the forest. In particular, Arik’s fever dream about ants going into his skin as he runs through the forest was written after a particularly brutal day when I maybe ran into a tangarana tree and had ants rain down on me, and one of my students managed to pick up a bad case of parasitic flesh eating spiders. There’s so much out there that will kill you that every year we make a bingo board, and every year we try not to get a blackout.

Every year we fail.

Jungle Bingo. Purpose: to laugh even though you just had to have one of your students medivaced by boat, in the dark, in alligator-infested waters.

My goal with Ardulum was to give readers a more subtle sense of danger than I think one normally gets with a forest. I’m from the USA, where our forests (continentally) are all temperate. With the spookiness I was trying to convey in regards to the andal, I really wanted readers to get a feel for just how creepy a forest can be.

Creepy forest with boat is creepy. That’s the Madre de Dios river, if you’re interested in knowing the name for what is haunting your dreams.

I tried to include as many of the immediate dangers as I could, such as the palm trees that have spines the length of your arm (and so thin you can barely tell they are there), the ubiquitous tangarana ants, and the large ground predators. I think all too often in science fiction and fantasy, the actual ecology of forests is skimmed over for just ‘a cluster of trees, and maybe a wolf.’ But forests are so much more than that, and much like food in fantasy, if you don’t take a minute to really think about what kind of forest your characters are in, and what the animals and plants are, you are missing an opportunity to immerse your reader. In a series like ARDULUM, where functional forestry is one of the bigger themes, it is absolutely essential.

And since I could talk about forests all day, but it really wouldn’t mean as much as photos, I’ll leave you all with a few really cool shots of why you should never visit Ardulum/Peru.

I caught the biggest electric eel the village had ever seen. What with being electric and all, and having a metal hook, we had to bludgeon it with sticks until it let go so we wouldn’t all be electrocuted in our metal boat.

The bludgeoning and impaling of an electric eel.

Oh look, fresh prints in the mud right behind us of a large cat. Lovely.

Me, properly attired for Ardulum. Poor Arik.

About the Books

Titles: First Don, Second Don, Third Don
Author: J.S. Fields
Publisher: NineStar Press
Is This Series Romance?: No
Genres: Sci Fi, space opera, slow burn romance
Pairings: F/F (cis)
Tropes: Soul mates
Categories: lesbian, asexual, nonbinary, third gender, POC
Necessary to Read In Order: No, But It Doesn’t Hurt
Content Warnings: violence and some gore, speciest behavior
Cover Artist: Natasha Snow
Series Blurb: The Ardulum series blends space opera and hard science into a story about two women persistently bound to their past, and a sentient planet determined to shape their future.

Book One Blurb:

The planet that vanishes. The planet that sleeps.

When Ardulum first appeared, the inhabitants brought agriculture, art and interstellar technology to the Neek people before vanishing back into space. Two hundred years later, Neek has joined the Charted Systems, a group of planets bound together through commerce and wormhole routes, where violence is nonexistent and technology has been built around the malleability of cellulose.

When the tramp transport Mercy’s Pledge accidentally stumbles into an armed confrontation between the Charted System sheriffs and an unknown species, the crew learns the high cost of peace—the enslavement and genetic manipulation of the Ardulan people. Now a young Neek, outcast from her world for refusal to worship ancient Ardulans as gods, must reconcile her planet’s religion with the slave child whom she has chosen to protect—a child whose ability to manipulate cellulose is reminiscent of the ancient myths of Ardulum. But protecting the child comes at a cost—the cultural destruction of her world and the deaths of billions of Charted System inhabitants.

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Book Two Blurb:

The Charted Systems are in pieces. Mercy’s Pledge is destroyed, and her captain dead. With no homes to return to, the remaining crew set off on a journey to find the mythical planet of Ardulum—a planet where Emn might find her people and Neek the answers she’s long sought. Finding the planet, however, brings a host of uncomfortable truths about Ardulum’s vision for the galaxy, and Neek’s role in a religion that refuses to release her. Neek must balance her planet’s past and the unchecked power of the Ardulans with a budding relationship and a surprising revelation about her own genealogy.

Ardulum: Second Don blends space opera and hard science into a story about two women persistently bound to their past, and a sentient planet determined to shape their future.

Buy Links: NineStar Press || All 3rd Party eTailers

Book Three Blurb:

The planet wakes.

Atalant is torn between two worlds. In uncharted space, head of a sentient planet, the new eld of Ardulum now leads the religion she once rejected. Emn is by her side, but the Mmnnuggl war brewing in the Charted Systems, threatening her homeworld of Neek, cannot be ignored. Atalant must return to the planet that exiled her in order to lead the resistance. She must return home a god, a hypocrite, a liar in gold robes, and decide whether to thrust her unwilling people into the truth of Ardulum, or play the role she has been handed and never see her family, or her world, again.

Buy Links: NineStar Press || All 3rd Party eTailers

Tour-wide Excerpt

I dislike this flight suit, Atalant muttered as her stuk absorbed into the rough material. The Ardulans did not refine the andal rayon as much as Charted Systems manufacturers did, and the fabric was full of rough, lumpish slubs.

If you could find some time for us to be alone and do away with the memories for a few hours, I’m sure I could arrange for my dress to make an appearance. The images that accompanied her statement flushed Atalant’s cheeks.

Maybe if we met onboard the Scarlet Lucidity, in orbit around Ardulum, where no one could interrupt us and I felt a bit freer… Atalant’s thoughts drifted into that delightful possibility. The Lucidity had soft chairs in the cockpit, wide beds in the quarters, a small bin of andal in case Emn got hungry…

Andal! Atalant’s priorities came crashing back down around her. The planet caught her wandering and whispered dreams of its own, dreams of saplings in open fields, of thick rains and busy pollinators. The collective consciousness of Ardulum sent a yearning desire for family, for a new place to call home.

“Home is overrated,” Atalant whispered.

“I don’t think so. What about your parents, Atalant?” Emn whispered into her ear, misunderstanding Atalant’s words. “Your father and your talther miss you, I’m sure. Your brother is there, waiting to see his sister.” Emn’s lips brushed Atalant’s forehead. “All the things you said at those political rallies, all the times the president cut you down, your exile, your uncle’s teachings… Could you just let all this hang? Can you let the truth, that you worked so hard to uncover, remain a mystery to the rest of your people?”

Atalant didn’t answer. When Emn didn’t press further, Atalant reached over Emn and lifted the window open to its full height. The sounds of reptiles croaking filled the silence between them. Atalant let the heaviness of her eyelids sink her into drowsy memories. She thought of the Lucidity, berthed and awaiting her return in a suburb of the capital. She thought of the gold robes she now regularly wore, of their similarities to the Heaven Guard robes she had so coveted in her youth. She thought of her brother, his pursuit of andal science over Ardulan religion, his urging her to join the Heaven Guard of Neek. She thought of soil barren from andal plantation farming, the decline of the forests on her homeworld, and the death of the Keft ecosystem. She thought of her uncle, the High Priest of Neek, of his teachings, the holy books, and of what the return of living gods could do for her stagnant planet.

The sound of Emn’s even breathing relaxed the remaining tightness in Atalant’s shoulders. As she drifted off into sleep, her mind wandered to the possibility: what would it be like for Ardulum to return to the planet Neek? What havoc would the mystic, traveling planet play on her world’s religion? On her family? Would she be welcomed as a hero, or still branded a heretic? Would she be shot on sight? Gold robes of the Eld or gold robes of the Heaven Guard? Did it matter?

What would it be like for her to come home?

About the Author

J.S. Fields (@Galactoglucoman) is a scientist who has perhaps spent too much time around organic solvents. She enjoys roller derby, woodturning, making chainmail by hand, and cultivating fungi in the backs of minivans. Nonbinary, but prefers female pronouns.

Fields has lived in Thailand, Ireland, Canada, USA, and spent extensive time in many more places. Her current research takes her to the Peruvian Amazon rainforest each summer, where she traumatizes students with machetes and tangarana ants while looking for rare pigmenting fungi. She lives with her partner and child, and a very fabulous lionhead rabbit named Merlin.

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