One of the things I’ve been doing these days is updating all of my backlist. In some cases that just means correcting typos and adding some neat formatting pieces that I didn’t have access to when I was first putting out these books. I’ve gotten past most of the books that were Scrivener-formatted (just have a couple more to do) which makes life a lot easier, because it’s just checking for typos, adding the new bells and whistles, and updating the back matter. Not a complete reformat.
Inheritance was one of the easy ones. I look back at it and, for the most part, find myself happy with what I turned out here. Did I expect it to expand into a multiverse with four separate subseries (or three if you count People of the Martiniere Legacy as part of the main Martiniere Legacy)? No, not really.
It launches the whole world with a bang–Ruby Barkley is going into a streaming video competition with the biobots she’s been developing and refining for over twenty-four years, three of those years with her ex-husband Gabe Ramirez. She and Gabe made a big splash in the first AgInnovator competition with these biobots, but when Gabe disappeared from her life, unexpectedly demanding a divorce and leaving her as a single mother juggling the ranch, her research, and their kid–that set back her work for years. But Ruby has a vision, and those biobots capable of not only providing soil and plant condition feedback down to square centimeters of land as well as adding nutrients and the ability for drought resistance are her dreamed answer to the problems presented by climate change.
Winning the AgSuperhero with $3.75 million dollars a year for five years, no need to show progress, is exactly what Ruby needs to push her over the top with the RubyBot (named by Gabe all those years ago). It gives the ranch a future.
But there are complications. One of her opponents is Gabe. Another is the woman responsible for breaking them up, Mariah Meyers. Meanwhile their son Brandon, who is a producer of the show, seems determined to force them back together.
And things just keep…happening. Sabotage. Blackmail. Then the unpleasant discovery that a well-intentioned but stupid choice by Brandon leaves her with no options but to at least pretend to make things up with Gabe, or risk all three of them being forced into lifetime indentured servitude.
Which…opens another can of shadowy secrets as the reasons for Gabe’s abandonment surface, after twenty-one years. Gabe has a hidden history which Ruby and Brandon need to know about, for their own safety. A heritage stolen from him by mind control technology, wielded by people who won’t hesitate to hurt those close to Gabe in order to cause him pain–and destroy Gabe as well.
Gabe isn’t who Ruby thought he was. And that–leads to choices that Ruby needs to make about their own future.
I’ve decided to put Inheritance at $2.99 permanently as a series introduction. I hope you’ll check it out.
