Julia Huni's Blog

The Saha Declination, book 3 in the Colonial Explorer Corps, is available on my YouTube channel. This book is narrated by the AI voices as Spoken.Press. There are a bunch of other books available at Spoken, too. They're currently in beta, so everything is free, but eventually it will be monetized.

Unlike the AI audio being offered on some of the big retailers, Spoken audio requires a lot more care–and you can tell. We can edit each line of the book, ensure any weird “hallucinations” are eliminated, and change the pronunciation of words–which is often necessary for sci fi. We can also choose exactly the right voice for each character.

I'm creating audio with AI voices so I can offer it now. It's important to me that those who can't read or see can still enjoy my work. Eventually, I hope the YouTube channel will become monetized, and I can use that money to hire human narrators to re-record these books. I'd love to do it now, but with the low return on investment (audio is expensive to produce and still a small share of the book market,) this series can't afford the cost.

If you only listen to human-narrated books, I have some of those, too. My Space Janitor series is also on the YouTube channel, and once it's monetized, I'll add the Former Space Janitor audio as they are completed. Rachel Music, my amazing narrator, recently finished Changing the Speed of Light Bulbs. Those audiobook are also available on Audible, Chirp, Google Play, and the other retailers, including my Payhip store.

If you'd like to help me in this endeavor, subscribe to my channel and like my content. And perhaps most importantly, share it with your friends!

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I am really excited to share with you my first book in a brand new genre (for me): cozy fantasy.

A Dragon Rider's Guide to Retirement is now available on Amazon in paperback and Kindle, and you can also get a signed copy of the book from my Payhip store.

What is cozy fantasy? I have heard it described as Lord of the Rings but if Frodo stayed in the Shire. Imagine Gandolf had one of his eagle friends drop the ring into Mount Doom, so they didn't have to take the perilous journey to Mordor. Sam is still a gardener and courting his sweetheart. Pipping and Merry run a failing fruit stand–they can't stay in business because they eat all their product. On Thanksgiving, Aragorn and Arwen stop by, bringing Uncle Boromir along. Legolas and Gimli run an axe throwing pub down the street.

If this sounds like the type of story you'd enjoy, I think you'll love my new book! Check it out here:

A Dragon Rider's Guide to Retirement

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My newest book is out: The Romara Confrontation. This is book 5 in the Colonial Explorer Corps, and the cross-over between the Krimson Empire and the rest of the Huniverse.

Two civilizations. One planet. No second chances.

Lieutenant Serenity “Siti” Kassis has trained her whole life for first contact missions, but nothing prepares her for this—arriving at a promising new world only to find it already inhabited by an advanced, spacefaring civilization. As acting commander, it’s her call whether to push forward or back away. One wrong move could spark a conflict neither side can afford.

On Lunesco, Quinn Templeton is expecting a quiet lunch with an old friend when the planetary defense system flags an unidentified ship in orbit. Since the revolution, she’s learned to negotiate, but first contact with an unknown species? That’s a whole new challenge.

Siti and Quinn could navigate mistrust, politics, and the weight of history to build something neither of their people expected—a future together. But they have to meet first. And something--or someone--is trying to keep them apart.

You don't have to have read Krimson Empire to enjoy this book–although you'll get a lot of backstory about Quinn, Tony, Sashelle, and the rest if you do. You definitely should read the first four books of the Colonial Explorer Corps first (although you can get away with just reading book 4.) Luckily for you, I have books 1-3 on sale right now to make that easy! Book 1 is free, world-wide. Books 2 and 3 are on Kindle Countdowns, which means they're on sale in the US and UK. (Amazon's rules, not mine!) And the whole series is currently in Kindle Unlimited, so you can read for free if you have a KU subscription.

Come with Siti to discover the Krimson Empire!

Also, if you like audio–I've just added the second CEC book, The Grissom Contention, to a new platform called Spoken.press. This is a robot-voice platform. (Yes, I know everyone calls it AI, but I have to tell you, it IS NOT intelligent. However, it is pretty amazing.) The voices on this platform are remarkably good for robots, and since Spoken focuses on multi-voice narration, this book is more like a radio-drama than a regular audiobook.

If you avoid AI, I respect that. But this platform allows me to get books that aren't earning enough to pay a human narrator into the hands–and ears–of people who can't read or who can't see well enough to read. Like my brother, whose eyesight was damaged. I'm offering these audiobooks free on YouTube (as soon as Spoken sends me the files, I'll get The Grissom Contention up there) in hopes of monetizing and eventually earning enough to pay a real person to record it. This is my way of supporting human narration without going bankrupt. So if you listen, please like, subscribe, and share with friends.

If you're looking for human-narrated audio, my original Space Janitor series is also on that YouTube channel in addition to being for sale on my Payhip store and all the usual audiobook retailers.

And the amazing Rachel Music is currently working on Changing the Speed of Lightbulbs. I can't wait!

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Jump complete, the crew went through the usual procedures, reporting in from each section of the CEC ship Loyal Observer. Maintenance, cargo, life support, and the others all checked in with an all clear. I leaned back in my corner, trying to stay out of the way of the organized, efficient crew. Captain Salu had invited me to be present for jump. Usually, the commander of the Phase 1 team witnessed arrival in the new system from the bridge, but my boss was “indisposed.” I certainly didn’t mind filling in.

My little sair-glider, Yasmi, chittered agreement in my ear. She didn’t understand language the way Liam had, but she echoed my emotions uncannily well.

An ensign flicked a holo-file to the captain’s chair. She glanced at it, then waved her hand through the approval icon, still focused on the reports coming up on the duty officer’s station.

The alert klaxon howled.

“Captain! Multiple contacts!” The communications officer sprang from her seat as if it was electrified. “Many, many multiples!”

“Many, many multiples? Is that what they’re teaching at the academy now?” Captain Salu muttered as she swiped the flashing red holo-icon that appeared before her. “Ship, defstat two.”

The ship’s system acknowledged, flashing the lights blue in an assigned sequence. The alert tone sounded in the overhead speakers and my audio implant, followed by the ship’s calm, flat voice. “Defense status is set to level two. All personnel, confirm.”

I swiped the confirm icon that appeared, acknowledging receipt of the alert. As everyone else on the bridge did the same, the captain turned back to the communications officer. “Put ‘em up.”

Before comm could reply, the ship went on. “Captain, defstat set to two. Confirmation at sixty-seven percent and climbing.”

“Acknowledged.” Salu pointed at the communications officer. “Comm?”

“Working on it, sir.” The comm officer—a newly commissioned ensign—hunched over her console, swiping through the display. The space at the front of the room filled with line after line of data, rolling upward at a rate too fast to allow us to read it.

“Pause!” the captain snapped out.

Ensign Warburton jumped a little, then hit the correct icon on her screen. The data stopped flowing.

“What am I looking at, Ensign?” Salu rose from her chair and stepped closer to the data.

“Standard comm data,” Warburton said, her voice pitched high and wobbly. “First column is assigned ID numbers—our system doesn’t recognize any of these sources, so it assigns a number. The rest is vectors, projected sources and destinations, and digitized packets.”

Salu turned to stare at Warburton, her fists clenching against her hips. “Berza is an unexplored system. How can there be this much—any comm data?”

“I don’t know, sir! If I didn’t know we just jumped to Berza, I’d think we’d landed at Sally Ride. Or maybe Lewei since I can’t translate any of this stuff. But even there, our system would recognize the identification packets. My computer is assigning IDs as if every signal was coming from an unregistered source.”

“You’re saying our newly discovered system is occupied?”

The Romara Confrontation will be available April 14th on my Payhip Store. It's up for preorder on Amazon and will go into Kindle Unlimited on April 24th.

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In today's climate, you probably thought this was going to be a political post, didn't you? But it's not. Although I suppose in some ways it is. Because my newest book, The Romara Confrontation, is coming out April 24th. It's the story of two cultures colliding when one discovers the other.

Lieutenant Serenity “Siti” Kassis has trained her whole life for first contact missions, but nothing prepares her for this—arriving at a promising new world only to find it already inhabited by an advanced, spacefaring civilization. As acting commander, it’s her call whether to push forward or back away. One wrong move could spark a conflict neither side can afford.

On Lunesco, Quinn Templeton is expecting a quiet lunch with an old friend when the planetary defense system flags an unidentified ship in orbit. Since the revolution, she’s learned to negotiate, but first contact with an unknown species? That’s a whole new challenge.

Siti and Quinn could navigate mistrust, politics, and the weight of history to build something neither of their people expected—a future together. But they have to meet first. And something–or someone–is trying to keep them apart.

The Romara Confrontation is book 5 in the Colonial Explorer Corps, and follows Siti, Joss, and Derek Lee as they meet the heroes of the Krimson Empire. If you haven't read either series, I recommend you start with book 1 of the CEC series. If you're short on time, you can jump in at book 4, which I designed to be a second entry point into the series.
This book can be read without reading Krimson Empire first. (But I hope you'll read it, too!)

Preorder here.

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Before Sun Spot Remover, I published the first book in which Vanti is the star: Dark Quasar Rising. In that book, Vanti travels with Arun, Elodie, and Leo–and Apawllo the cat, of course–to Gargarin. Well, now the team is back at it–this time they're headed for Lewei. I'm about 60% done with the story, and it's shaping up nicely. Here's a tiny snippet:

I cross my arms and lean back as far as the co-pilot’s chair will allow. “Your turn. Why don’t you want me working for you?”

Arun's face goes pink, and he looks away.

I don’t want to have a “define the relationship” discussion—now or probably ever—but I’m not going to let him get away with telling someone else he won’t hire me. Even if that someone else is technically my boss and she just begged him to take me on. In fact, maybe especially in that case. “Well?”

He sighs, heavily. “I don’t want to hire you because— Well, the truth is you’re a terrible pilot.”

Is Vanti really a terrible pilot? Will she still speak to Arun after he tells her this? And why is Elodie trying to get Arun to hire Vanti away from her?

You'll have to wait until the book is live to find out. Dark Quasar Ignites is due this summer.

Have you heard of Shepherd.com? It's a site that was created to replicate the feeling of browsing a bookstore. One of the ways they do this is by including curated lists of authors' favorite books. I just did a post for them–check it out and let me know what you think! And look around the site. I'd love to hear your thoughts on it.

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Two things today… first off, I have a cover to reveal! The newest Former Space Janitor book is off to beta readers. Soon, I’ll be sending it to the ARC team, and then it will be live! I put it up for pre-order this morning… and because I always do these things backwards, here’s the cover reveal!

That cover is by the amazing Lesia T at GermanCreative. She’s done all of my Space Janitor covers and is just amazing.

The second piece of news is I think I’ve gotten the Space Janitor audio back online almost everywhere. It might take a little longer to get to Hoopla (they have some weirdly long lead times) and possibly Chirp, but it should be available everywhere else! Let me know if you can’t find it. And Rachel is working on Planetary Spin Cycle this month! I hope to have it out in May.

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My audiobooks are currently available from Audible and many other audiobook sites, such as Google Play, Chirp, Apple, Kobo, Barnes & Nobel, etc. With the exception of Audible, those files were uploaded via a distributor called Findaway Voices.

Uploading an audiobook is a long process. You have to upload each chapter, plus your intro, outro and any epilogues etc, as individual files. With my short chapters, this means each audiobook is thirty to forty files. Findaway Voices made it easy for me—I upload files once, and they distributed to around 50 different sales platforms.

Back in November 2021, Findaway Voices was acquired by Spotify. For the last two years, things have been great. Spotify brought us a larger ecosystem, getting our audiobook into more retailers with no additional effort on our side.

I guess there’s no such thing as a free lunch.

Today, Spotify sent out new Terms of Service (TOS). These are the rules by which they conduct business. Continuing to use Findaway as a distributor means agreeing to these TOS en masse. The new TOS includes language that gives Spotify irrevocable and nearly unlimited rights to do whatever they want with my intellectual property, including translations, transcriptions, and even derivative products. They could take my world and characters and create a whole new story that they could then sell in any format (digital, print, audio, video, comic, etc) with no input or oversight from me—and no compensation for using my creation.

It would also allow them to use my narrators’s voices to train and clone AI audio. I don’t have the rights to their voices (just this performance) so I’m not sure if this would stand up in court. But Spotify can afford many more lawyers than me.

As you can imagine, I don’t like this. So I have requested my books be pulled from Findaway’s service. This means my audio will temporarily be unavailable on most retail platforms until I can load it directly. (It will still be on Audible, possibly iTunes, and of course, my own store.) It may be permanently unavailable on some platforms like Chirp and Hoopla.

I know I will not be the only author taking this step. I have already heard from many friends who will be doing the same. So if you buy audio somewhere other than Audible or iTunes, grab the books you want now. They may disappear soon.

Better yet, buy direct from the author. You can find my audiobooks here:

Julia’s Payhip Store

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Have I mentioned that I have a couple of stories headed for the moon? Digital copies of First Contract and Sashelle's Quest are “unofficial stowaways” on the Writers on the Moon datacard that is part of the DHL Moonbox on the Peregrine lander. The mission has been delayed a couple of times, but the current launch date is early (EARLY!) morning on Monday, January 8th.

First Contract was part of Beyond the Stars: Rocking Space, an anthology edited by Patrice Fitzgerald and is traveling as part of her body of work. Sashelle's Quest was originally published in the Hellcats Anthology, and was kindly snuck onto the mission by fellow hellcat Sonia Rao.

You can read both of those stories for free.

First Contract – this is available right here on my blog in four installments. It's a silly, stand-alone short story about a brother and sister who accidentally discover aliens. Or get discovered by aliens…

Sashelle's Quest – this story is free to my newsletter subscribers, but you can sign up and grab it here. This story can stand on its own, but it's backstory of a character from the Krimson Empire series. If you don't want any spoilers, you'd want to read the first three books in that series first.

There are several other payloads that include authors and artists from all over the world. Check out the Peregrine lander's wikipedia page for more info.

If you want to watch the launch, register on NASA's official event page. And Writers on the Moon has a Discord channel where you can chat with other readers and writers.

I love that it's on the Peregrine, since Millennium Peregrine is the name of Lou's space ship in Krimson Empire. As Lou says, “Falcon has trademark issues.”

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The Federation made three mistakes:

Leaving Quinn to dieFraming Quinn for treasonTaking Quinn's kids

She could get over the first two. 

With her friend Tony, a man of surprising connections and mysterious family, Quinn rescues herself and the other “inconvenient” spouses left to die on the abandoned asteroid outpost.

When Quinn launches her campaign to retrieve her children, the Federation will realize taking children from their mother is the biggest mistake of all. Because Quinn will do whatever it takes to get them back–even start a revolution. 

The Krimson Empire books are coming! Book 1, Krimson Run, has been released on all of the retailers. Some of them take longer to populate new books, and I've got a little glitch going on Barnes & Nobel (it takes up to 2 weeks for them to approve a seller!) but they're live everywhere else. I've got links on the book page. Or you can buy direct from me via my PayHip store.

Yes, I make a little more money if you buy via Payhip. AND, you can get a discount on books 2-4 if you buy them together. PLUS, I'll release the books earlier on my store than on the retailers. So if you want 'em early and cheaper, grab them via Payhip. Look for the special discount right below the black CheckOut button.

This series was previously released by CMI so if you're a Kindle reader, you might want to double check your library before clicking the buy button.

Buy from Julia via PayhipBuy from one of the other retailers

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