Genevieve Valentine’s “first-ever novella,” Dream Houses, is being published by the Washington Science Fiction Association Press – and will be available first to members of Capclave, October 10-12, in Gaithersburg MD where Valentine is one of guests of honor.

She says this will be a limited print edition, the first 250 of which will be signed.

Pre-orders are being taken by the Press for the Trade Hardcover edition (only). Books will be shipped no earlier than October 13. The cost is $25.

What is this story about? Here’s the hook —

It takes a certain type to crew a ship that drops you seven years at a time into the Deep. Kite-class cargo ships like Menkalinan get burned-out veterans, techs who’ve been warned off-planet, medics who weren’t much good on the ground. The Gliese-D run isn’t quite the end of the line, but it’s getting there. No cachet, no rewards, no future; their trading posts get Kites full of cargo that the crew never ask questions about, because if it’s headed for Gliese-D, it’s probably something nobody wanted.

A year into the Deep, Amadis Reyes wakes up. Menkalinan is sounding the alarm; something’s wrong. The rest of the crew are dead.

[Thanks to Michael J. Walsh for the story.]