Here’s a bit from my forthcoming novel Rembrandt’s Station, scheduled for release on January 5. Stay tuned!

Some stationmaster he’d turned out to be. Seven years of faultless work, and all it took was one slip to bring serious trouble to the planet he loved. Too careless to be an effective administrator had been the assessment of his erstwhile father the Duke when trying to find a placement for him within Rembrandt Pharmaceuticals. The old man had been right. Blast it all.

He gazed up at the stars above Monralar and gripped the railing of the balcony outside his quarters so hard his hands ached. As stationmaster, he’d let the Johnson brothers slip through. He’d let Aunt Olivia down as well, if it allowed a Johnson victory, and he could find no way to reframe the failure as due to anything other than rank incompetence. Bertie sighed and massaged one aching hand with the other. He was thirty-nine. What did he have to show for it?

A shooting star streaked across the sky, as if bidding him to look up for the answer. He firmed his jaw. He’d done a lot. Three Firsts at University, in economics, finance, and laws. Substantial wealth gained in alien territories, never an easy task. Tolar’s orbital trade station. He’d done the latter two after the Duke had expelled him from the family, accomplished them without Rembrandt resources or connections. That was something, whether His Nibs admitted it or not—which he didn’t. Bertie had thought at the time that surely building a trade station for a newly opened world would get the Duke’s attention. Instead, he’d called it that Tolari nonsense. God. There had to be something he could do to convince the old man that disowning his youngest son had been a mistake.

Unfortunately, Bertie was all out of ideas on how to do that.