A dystopian time-travel romance with a twist.
There’s a new girl in town, and when she takes up residence in the beach house next to Jake he’s immediately interested. Octavia is beautiful, intelligent and speaks with an exotic accent that no one can quite place. But what Jake or anyone else in this sleepy little beach town could never suspect is that Octavia is from the distant future. And she’s here on a mission.
Jake is a divorcee with a precocious 11 year old daughter. Octavia never knew what having a family meant, having been raised in the eugenics farms of the future. She hopes to fit into 21st century society and carry out her mission in secret, but falling in love wasn’t part of the mission plan.
What do you do when the most important thing about you is something no one would ever believe?
As their romance grows Octavia is torn between her mission and the people she loves, and Jake begins to suspect Octavia is carrying a dark secret she isn’t telling him. For the first time in her life Octavia feels like she’s part of a family and she isn’t ready to give that up. It’s not long before she is forced to make a terrible choice. She desperately wants to tell Jake the truth about herself, but how can he ever possibly believe it?
Octavia Seven is about how our decisions can make a difference. Whether Octavia’s choice results in a better world…well, I’d hate to spoil the plot so I’ll let you read the book yourself.
When life imitates fiction…
In my story, a pandemic sweeps the world and Octavia comes from the future to study life as it was before a virus ends civilization as we know it. I wrote it well before 2020, but hadn’t sent it yet to my proofreader when the pandemic hit in early 2020. As covid swept the world I lost interest in the project, not sure if I would ever publish it. I shelved it, thinking, who wants to read apocalyptic sci-fi novels when it feels like we’re actually living through one?
In those first few months of covid we didn’t yet know how bad it would get. It felt like we were living in a sci-fi movie, and the possibility of the real thing dampened my enthusiasm for fictional stories about them. So the manuscript sat untouched for a few years.
It’s strange how life can imitate fiction at times.
Fortunately covid subsided, the sun did rise again, and it looked like we were going to get through it okay. So I returned to work on the manuscript and got it ready for publication. A killer virus may be part of the backstory to Octavia, but the main message is one of hope, about how we can make better choices that result in a better world, and I believe the world needs stories like that.
Octavia Seven is a blend of sci-fi, time travel, romance and thriller. Arthur C. Clarke meets Nicholas Sparks.
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