Del would want a motorcycle. Something powerful and fast.

That’s what she said! :)
But, ya know, if it was necessary, Amelia could probably have talked her into it.

If, however, she knows she's going somewhere where she'll need to fight, she might agree to let Amelia provide some hidden weaponry including tiny grenades (anti-matter) disguised as earrings, or a restraint cable disguised as a belt.

If Del knows she's going to have to pass a search, she won't carry anything incriminating, but rely on her wits and her power to get out of any trouble.

I have been interviewing the authors of the Northwest Independent Writers Association.
Today's interview is with Doug Beisley who writes children's books, many based on music.

The complete interview is on the NIWA YouTube channel: youtu.be/t-MifHAK3Ag

Amelia and Bilan would compete to find the most unusual toppings that still counted. Jie would go with pepperoni (meatless, of course) and maybe green peppers or tomato.
Del would just go with whatever everyone else was ordering.

Kind of.
I wrote a series of (really bad and thankfully long lost) series of erotic space adventures for Usenet back in the day. But the main character in those stories became a side character in Thoughtless, before she was put into cryogenic storage for five hundred years.

That would be Amelia. After everything that happens to her in the first book, she goes to Venus and finally has a chance to leave everything behind and embark on a good life when she's accepted as a student to the prestigious Venus Academy of Science. But then Del's drama spills over and ruins that.

In Careless, the whole world (Venus) is dangerous. The atmosphere is not only corrosive, but going too low in it will overheat and/or crush you under the pressure. Even in a sealed or aircraft, too much pressure can cause structural integrity loss leading to leaks that let in the atmosphere.

In Careless, the starting mystery is what does Caweys know and, perhaps more importantly, how does he know it. He drops a couple of major names that he should have no way of knowing, and may somehow know more about Del's power than she does.

Exactly 💯

Del has no retirement plans, and really doesn't expect to last that long.
She can hope for a happy ending for her friends, but doesn't see how it could apply to her.
"Live fast, die young, and leave a desiccated corpse floating forever through the infinite void of open space."

"No gatekeeping. No fees. Just one writer helping another. I’ll read your first page and give public feedback on YouTube. Submit here: buff.ly/ulE7lSh%22,%... #FirstPageCritique"

For Del, a better question would be if there were anything she *was* prepared for. :)
She didn't bring any gear with her on her current excursion, and didn't even realize that she'd be unable to communicate from a new city where only the construction crew has access to the communications array.

#AwesomeCharacters
For Del, it would be strawberries. They're delicious and she understands them. They're a common plant in the wall gardens of the tunnels on Mars where she lived for a couple of years.

She would be delighted, possibly close to tears, if anyone gifted her a strawberry plant.

#AprilAdventure
When Del gets to Venus, the last thing she expected was to have her plans hijacked by Bilan's brother, Caweys, who had several surprises for her.

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I've been interviewing the members of the Northwest Independent Writers Association. Today's interview is with Barbara Moritsch, writer of ecology-based both fiction and non-fiction.
You can find the interview at

To her credit, Bilan learning her secrets ended up making their friendship closer rather than driving her away as Del had feared.

Del will befriend anyone who is friendly to her. She is a terrible judge of character, but it doesn't burn her badly very often because she's also very slow to let anyone close. She has too many secrets that she shares with almost nobody. It was only happenstance that Bilan learned some of them.

the names of every character other than Yagmar himself.

Yagmar’s name comes from when I was in high school and first started writing stories about him. I was 15 and thought the name sounded cool.

Several years before I started writing Yagmar, my cat jumped up on my keyboard and turned around twice, while I had a text document open. I saved the resulting file. I pulled out 5-7 characters at a time, added an occasional vowel and deleted everything that wasn’t a letter. Those became (1/2)

The name, by the way, is an alias that she came up for herself when she left Mars, not expecting anyone in the Belt to be familiar with “Old Martian” )aka Esperanto.) (4/4)

Shortened to “Mal”, which is the captain’s name in another popular SF franchise.
So, I finally settled on “Delokita” (displaced), which implies not just lost but deliberately pushed aside, which was appropriate for reasons we’ll learn about in the fourth book. (3/4)

part, though, because it sounded too much both like “thought” which I thought was too much on the nose and “pripensa” looked too much like “princess”, which was definitely not her. I looked at various versions of “lost” including “malokita” (misplaced) but that would have been (2/4)

I wanted an Esperanto name that sounded like it could be a name.
I looked through several words to describe her. I briefly considered “Senpripensa”, which is the name of the first book, which would have made her short name “Sen” which wouldn’t have been too bad. I didn’t like the “pensa” (1/4)

#AprilAdventures
Del's only goal is to find out what Caweys knows about a mutual associate of theirs.
Unfortunately, to do that she has to go with him to where he wants to take her.

Occasionally. Profit's nice, but never lasts long. Vengeance she would have been happier about longer.

#AwesomeCharacters
It's rare for Del to refuse any temptation, but in her first book she did. There was a man who'd wronged her in one direction and an organization promising a well-paying gig in another. She had to choose between them, and went for profit, losing her chance for vengeance.

Their mutual friend, Jie, although he's both polysexual and polyamorous (i.e., "normal") has no sexual interest in either of them, so I guess that's two more platonic relationships. :)