About Perfume River A lot went into this collection of poems, particularly as it took so long to pull the collection together. I'm one of those unfortunates who looked up my life expectancy and assumed I had years to get it together in the poetry department. 78 years? Please, I'm not even 50. I lived my life chasing bylines for my articles, and then agents for my novel manuscripts, and my poems...well, my poems. They sat getting written and accumulating time. Until one day I learned that those life expectancy lists were missing a couple of words. The set of numbers should begin with "Anywhere...

It's the 26th Century-an age when the children of humanity sail the known Galaxy on billowing tall ships powered by dark energy. The Terran Union, an alliance of worlds banded under the leadership of Earth for mutual trade and defense, just ended a disastrous conflict with one of its own: the Rus Federacy-a feudal society of genetically altered descendants of the former Russian Empire. When a mysterious alien power known as the Gree invade the worlds of the Union, it falls to Xia, the Jovian commander of the starship Black Meadow, to prepare her crew for the battle her superiors on Earth...