Neodymium Apocalypse, Part 1

Lem's world is ending.

That's not just her personal world, even though she's still reeling a year after burying one of her best friends at the bottom of a desert ravine-and she's got family enslaved by actual mind control on a distant planet under military blockade.

It's not just her political world, either, even though the freedom fighters she served since childhood seem pretty happy believing she died after they exiled her.

No, the actual Universe is under attack as interdimensional forces siphon its energy into another plane, eager to speed along its final heat death. They think Lem's world would look a whole lot better empty, and one of the most powerful military leaders across five solar systems agrees. He's constructing a vast, planet-spanning Structure under their direction to rend a hole in the fabric of space-and Lem may have accidentally handed him its power source. Now she's got to find an ancient bioship and assemble an inter-species team to stop the apocalypse, or find a way to tell those she loves a decent goodbye.

Jen Finelli is a world-traveling scifi author who's ridden a motorcycle in a monsoon, swum with sharks, crawled under barbed wire in the mud, and hiked everywhere from hidden coral deserts and island mountains to steaming underground urban tunnels littered with poetry. She was once locked inside a German nunnery, and recently had to find her way through swamp-filled Korean foothills dotted with graveyards on Friday the 13th under a full moon without a flashlight. On her quest to rescue stories often swallowed by the shadows, she's delivered babies, cradled the dying, and interviewed everyone from prostitutes to Senators. If you want cancer-fighting zombie fiction, dinosaur picture books, scientists jumping into volcanoes, or talking cars and peyote legislation, you might like Jen. You're welcome to download some of her stories for free at byjenfinelli.com/you-want-heroes-and-fairies, or join her quest to build a clinic for the needy at patreon.com/becominghero. Jen's a practicing MD, FAWM candidate, and sexual assault medical forensic examiner-but when she grows up, she wants to be a superhero