This book, which tells the story of a young adventurer with a badly scarred face joining a science team investigating the reappearance of a long-lost explorer ship from Earth, has two points of origin. The first is the overall plot, which began as a short story titled "Mission to Bellatrix" (first published in the paranormal/sci-fi romance anthology Lucky Stars, and later available as a stand-alone story on Amazon, Smashwords, and Kobo). I’d already created a character I was eager to use in a story, Kolya Mason, who had a scarred face and a damaged eye from an accident several years prior, but I hadn’t found a story that suited her.

Until one day I was invited to submit a story to the aforementioned romance anthology. Romance isn’t really my thing, but within seconds of getting the invitation, ideas started clicking together. I thought Kolya would be a perfect character for a romance story, sort of inverting something I’ve seen a lot of -- a scarred or otherwise less-than-attractive man landing a supermodel-hot love interest. I also thought that making Kolya bitter or angry due to her disfigurement would be the obvious way to go, so I decided to write her as much more positive and upbeat, with a good sense of humor and an adventurous spirit. Having survived an explosion that could’ve killed her, she didn’t want to waste her second chance, and as soon as she was back on her feet, she decided to start hitchhiking on starships and explore new worlds.

She also wasn’t looking for a love interest. She’s self-sufficient and seeing brand-new sights every day was more than enough for her. But she wouldn’t be opposed to developing a relationship, either, if one actually started to happen. When it did, she considered it another adventure, and decided to see where it took her.

The other half of the book’s origin started with my novelette Game Over, which introduced a set of characters who also appear in Uncharted Territory, making this work in progress a sequel to the novelette, taking place in the same universe. The ship from Game Over is the one Kolya boards when she sets out on her new adventure, and though only three of its crew members appeared in "Mission to Bellatrix" to prevent the story from becoming too crowded, there’s room in the full-length novel for all of them to be featured.

When the short story was finished, I started making plans to flesh it out into a full novel. I greatly enjoyed writing the characters in Game Over and wanted to tell more stories about them, and at the same time I thought Kolya’s adventure deserved a longer-form story, and the two combined quite nicely. There’s also much that happened in "Mission" that begs to be explored further, particularly the mysterious ruins on Gamma Orionis b and what’s found in them, as well as the fallout from the story’s central conflict.

So, here we are. Writing the short story was the most fun I’ve had in quite some time, and expanding it into a novel is just as enjoyable. I hope it proves just as entertaining to read.