The Clan Chronicles: The Trade Pact

Trade Pact
Trade Pact
Trade Pact

The Trade Pact trilogy, originally called "The Trade Pact Universe," encounters the Clan once they've settled onto Human worlds and are quite satisfied, more or less, with their situation. Things are, of course, about to change. Sira has come of age. There are Humans very much aware of the Clan in their midst.
And then there are the Drapsk.
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My first manuscript. Not the one anyone's seen, mind you. I dug it out of storage for this photo, to prove I really did use Roman numerals as the titles for my stories. When I decided I'd be showing other people this one, I had to give it a real title. So I picked a line of dialogue from the latter half of the book, A Thousand Words for Stranger. Apparently, I'd had second thoughts. The crossed out versions here were "I Am, Myself, A Stranger" and "To Myself a Stranger." Glad I went with my first thought and that my editor liked it too.First page of Thousand
Pen
If The Clan Chronicles was a sandwich, The Trade Pact would be the filling, with Stratification and Reunification thick slices of homemade bread top and bottom to let you hold it in your hands.

Why the filling? The Trade Pact is where it all began (literally). You can read its three volumes first, as many readers have, or as part of The Clan Chronicles.

Your choice.

Choice, with all it implies. Freedom. Preference. (Moments of numbing confusion.) To follow the dictates of your heart, wherever it leads you. But to the Clan, Choice means something else entirely.

The Trade Pact is about Sira and Morgan. It is about the power of hearts and free will. But these things are not, and can never be, part of the Clan.

Sira's choices -- her Choice -- have set in motion forces that will determine not only the future of the Clan, but of the Trade Pact itself.

- Julie