Here’s the truth from the writer’s bench: Phoebe’s Abrauxian Assassin fought me every step of the way.
I drafted this book three times. Each pass was a new set of boot prints across fresh mud, and every time I thought I’d found solid ground the trail slid out from under me. The problem was never the planets, the Type-9 Hybrid women or the Vorran warriors. It was Phoebe. She refused to sit where I put her. I kept trying to park her in the comic-relief seat and she kept stealing the controls, insisting the mission had to run through her or not at all.
On paper she starts as a struggling American actress with a Kardashian vibe trending devastating memes and a career cratering move role. Pretty, mouthy, and self-absorbed, she is the kind of woman people underestimate on sight. Under that lacquer is a siren who made a vow to bury the dangerous parts and pass for ornamental. Then I dropped her on a violent, primitive world where huts collapse, jungle storms rage, and the only law that counts is the one you can enforce with your own bare hands. A lesser character would fold but Phoebe began to rise.
The beats came hard-won. I wrote scenes where she bantered and swanned and the story lay there, pretty and dead. The fix was not to tame her. The fix was to let her embarrass herself, care out loud, and carry memories she spent years refusing to touch. When she finally stops performing for cameras that are not there and steps in front of people who wouldn't survive without her, the book woke up. That is the line between girl-on-a-yacht and woman-in-command.
Her arc is not a makeover. It is a forging. Stilettos become footwork. Lipstick becomes war paint. A violet planet becomes her proving ground. She learns to deploy the power she has always hidden. When she sings, the universe remembers her. When she falls, she gets back up and counts heads. That is who she truly was all along.
Getting the book to reflect her arc meant cuts with a war axe. Whole subplots went to the pyre. I tuned the prose until the sentence rhythm matched the drumbeat of Phoebe's heart. I let the romance earn its oxygen through shared work rather than shared looks. I made sure every joke earned its keep. If a scene didn't move the story, information, or bodies, it shipped out.
Where does that leave us now? With a story that opens on a woman everyone misjudges and closes on one who has nothing left to prove. Though she still cares about aesthetics, she is also the reason most walk out of that jungle alive.
Thank you for your patience while I wrestled this one into the space opera it was always supposed to be. If you have ever been underestimated, if you have ever hidden a gift because it burns bright and scares the room, I wrote this for you. Strap in. Phoebe has the bridge.