Amy has always loved science fiction—books, movies, shows, and games. She was born in San Diego, California, and moved with her family to Vancouver, Washington, at the age of seven. After devouring some of the classics like Dune and Ender's Game in her tween years, she began writing science fiction and fantasy short stories.
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In the ensuing years, Amy attended the Vancouver School of Arts and Academics, where she continued to study creative writing, visual art and played viola in the school orchestra. During this time, she began the very early sketches of what would eventually evolve into the Cadicle series.
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Amy received a Bachelor of Science degree in Psychology from Portland State University, and also pursued minors in Professional Writing and Business Administration. After graduating, she moved to Portland, Oregon, and began working in business development for an energy efficiency consulting firm. Over the next several years, she primarily wrote proposals to prospective utility clients and managed the proposal development process. She then transitioned from energy efficiency into the architectural, engineering and planning industry. However, she eventually succumbed to the writing bug.
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Now a full-time author, Amy currently lives in Portland, Oregon, with her husband. When she's not writing, she enjoys travel, wine tasting, binge-watching TV series, and playing epic strategy board games.
BIOGRAPHY
TARAN EMPIRE SAGA
BOOK 3: EMPIRE DEFIED
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ABOUT THE BOOK
Some alliances were never meant to last...
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Dark forces are working in the shadows within the Taran Empire. When a series of attacks hit the Outer Colonies, it becomes clear a new war is brewing.
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As Jason and his family try to track down the perpetrators, they soon learn that their enemies pose a greater threat than they could have imagined. The Taran Empire’s fight for survival is about to begin.
PLOT SYNOPSIS - Empire Defied (Taran Empire Book 3)
After months of trying to catch a solid lead on the Coalition, Jason’s task force keeps coming up emptyhanded. An investigation into a secret lab on a remote asteroid is another dead-end, but it points to potential cloning experimentations, harkening back to the Priesthood’s research.
They finally catch a break when they realize there’s a strange correlation between a traveling band’s tour schedule and the disappearances of Gifted women across the Outer Colonies. Since Lexi’s Gifted friend, Melisa, went missing after joining a branch of the Coalition, there’s a likely connection. With resources thin, the TSS decides to send a Junior Agent, Kali, on the trail for her pre-graduation internship.
Meanwhile, Lexi is busy working on the new civilian training initiative for the TSS. When she submits a draft of the materials, Jason suggests the two of them take a trip to Tararia to meet Raena and Ryan.
The mini-vacation offers a chance for Lexi to demystify her assumptions about Taran nobles and realize she has been welcomed into the family. She also has the opportunity to have the bioluminescence restored in her irises, which had been surgically altered while she was on the run years before. An unanticipated outcome of the visit is that Lexi and Jason’s relationship is made very public on the front page of the Empire’s tabloids.
While the TSS figures out what to do about the Coalition, the political situation across the Empire is in decline. There are increasing calls for autonomy of the Outer Colonies worlds, which is being driven by the Coalition’s propaganda. Raena and Ryan have been getting targeted by the media, which they suspect is coming from the corrupt Monsari Dynasty.
Once back at Headquarters, Jason’s team finally gets its breakthrough when Kali and her civilian partner Mika discover an ex-Priest is behind the disappearances. However, it’s clear he’s not working alone. All signs point to the Coalition. Kali goes back out into the field, where she eventually locates a hidden facility with forty missing women who’ve been held in stasis, including Lexi’s friend, Melisa.
Lexi and Melisa are reunited, but so much has changed in the past year for Lexi while it only feels like weeks to her friend. Recovery will take time, but Lexi’s new training program offers a potential path forward for Melisa.
Unfortunately, the training program suffers a devastating setback when the new facility on Antaris is bombed. The Coalition is behind it, and it makes finding the culprits that much more urgent. Raena takes a trip to Antaris to get some face time with citizens while also trying to improve her public image.
Another almost-attack on the planet Glaendor reveals that the Coalition has continued to work on the transdimensional weapon that destroyed Quel, which has now been tethered to a handler. This ‘Pesta’ weapon may be a helpful link to the higher dimensions, but it goes missing after the encounter on Glaendor.
Recognizing the dire situation, Wil decides to interface with the ancient device discovered on Earth. He learns that it is a type of ‘bridge’, designed to lock things in the higher dimensions to a specific time and place in spacetime; it might be a way to fight back against the Erebus, but the device doesn’t work as designed and will need to be repaired.
The undercover work with the Coalition reveals that the organization’s leadership is based on a ship, though there are also indications that there’s an important operation happening on the planet Zeron. Wil is ultimately able to use a backdoor in the independent jump drive tech to track the command ship, but it appears to be a trap.
Jason cautiously leads the infiltration of the Coalition ship, Horizon. Once on board, he encounters two Gatekeeper hybrids who seem all too willing to let them search the ship. He realizes the entire thing was a setup, designed to throw the TSS off the real trail. Magdalena, the only Taran on the Coalition’s leadership council, is killed, but her assistant Hanek is brought in for questioning.
With the Coalition’s alien leaders still on the loose and the Empire so unstable due to the insidious influence, Wil lays the groundwork for the TSS and Guard to take joint decisive action, should the need arise. Monsari needs to be brought down and the aliens need to be stopped. The real fight for the Empire’s future is about to begin…