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.
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.
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.
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
MINDSPACE
BOOK 2: CONSPIRACY
ABOUT THE BOOK
Kira’s greatest opponent may be herself.
Following her exposure to experimental nanotech, Captain Kira Elsar faces an uncertain future. But uncontrollable transformations aren’t her only problem.
A previously undetected alien menace, a race capable of remote telepathic control, is threatening her home system… and the Tararian Guard. With the discovery that a government official in Kira’s home system has been subverted, Kira’s team must get control of the situation before the Elvar Trinary descends into chaos.
PLOT SYNOPSIS - Conspiracy (Mindspace Book 2)
While completing her investigation of illegal nanotech experimentations in an MTech lab on Valta, Captain Kira Elsar of the Tararian Guard is infected with a new strain of nanites. Upon returning to her base, Orion Station, Kira notices her eyes glowing orange—a trait of the experimental Robus.
Kira immediately enters quarantine. Soon thereafter, she transforms fully for the first time into the Robus alien hybrid state, where the nanites coat her with metallic scales and silvery claws.
Leon—Kira’s boyfriend—and his science team begin studying Kira’s nanites to understand their function and if they can be disabled. Not having the equipment he needs for his analysis, Leon returns to Valta with Kira’s covert ops team to commandeer items from MTech’s lab. While leaving with the equipment, the team gets into an altercation with the Mysaran leader—Chancellor Cynthia Hale—and an unknown man high up at MTech, as well as a complement of soldiers in the Mysaran military. They barely make it out unscathed, mystified about the nature of the relationship between the Mysaran government and MTech.
Back at Orion Station, Colonel Kaen is facing a transformation of his own. Three years prior, he was unwittingly taken over by a telepathic alien entity known as Nox, which has been covertly directing Kaen’s actions. Kaen realizes that he was responsible for the Guard security breaches. Unwilling to continue being a passenger in his own body, Kaen steals a ship as part of a risky plan to get himself help.
Kira and her commanding officer, Major Sandren, manage to board the ship as Kaen pulls away from the station. They apprehend Kaen and interrogate him, learning that Nox and his kind once lived on Valta; these beings are the reason behind the Valtan’s unusual telepathy. Another of the entities has possessed Chancellor Hale. Leon and Doctor Elric devise a treatment to dissolve the ‘telepathic receptor’—or TR—in Kaen, a nanite-created structure in the brain that allows the alien entities to control their hosts. Nox is forcibly removed from Kaen, where he then jumps into Jared, a former MTech scientist in the Guard’s custody for his crimes on Valta.
Understanding that the alien beings are behind the attempts to start a civil war in the Elvar Trinary, Kira and her team go on a covert mission to Mysar to extract Chancellor Hale so they can bring her to Orion Station for treatment and dissolve her TR. Leon’s sister, Ellen, has inside connections in the Mysaran government and has gone ahead to facilitate the Guard’s entry into the capitol—of her own volition, much to the Guard’s annoyance.
When Kira’s team arrives, they discover that Ellen is now a prisoner and that Chancellor Hale has no intention of submitting. Kira enters her Robus state and engages in a telepathic battle with Hale’s possessor, an alien being known as Reya. Kira is able to suppress Reya, but the shadow of Cynthia Hale’s former self chooses death for herself. Reya is forced out, freeing everyone on Mysar who’d been under its control. However, with most of the government having been subverted, the resulting power vacuum leaves Mysar and the rest of the Elvar Trinary in a state of unrest.
With Nox still linked to Jared, Kira and the investigation team take the opportunity to locate the aliens’ base of operations. They trace the telepathic link to the Gaelon System adjacent to the Elvar Trinary. A recon mission is in order.