Between Fleets follows a Casarian officer and a Kherrian engineer whose unexpected romance may uncover a lost homeworld and determine whether their wary civilizations can build a shared future. What was the inspiration for the setup of your story?

The inspiration came from two distinct sources. I was part of a forum-based writing community where we wrote in a collaborative sci-fi setting, and all sorts of first contacts were prevalent. Eventually, this became the playground for developing my writing skills, and I set out to improve dialogue specifically.

When I played Mass Effect, the inspiration finally sparked during my first play-through. In the game, you have the option to romance crewmembers, and I became a “Talimancer”, to use the terminology within the fandom. In one of the romance’s encounters, Tali’Zorah gushes about a romcom called Fleet and Flotilla where a Turian conscript and Quarian Pilgrim fall in love. This was the springboard for Between Fleets, a self-imposed challenge to write outside my comfort zone.

How did you develop the distinct histories, traditions, technologies, and political structures of the Casarian and Kherrian societies?​

Kherrian society shares a lot of similarities with Mass Effect’s Quarians, like the military junta, robes, and aspects of naming conventions, aside from the obvious ones. However, I integrated my speculative perspectives and extrapolations into Kherrian society to make them distinct, as well as linking them to the wider themes of the Astral Lion setting. A fine-grained example of that is what instruments such a civilisation would be able to preserve—something I hope every fellow musician can appreciate—or how a pilgrimage agency might work. Like the Casarians, they are very much shaped by the environment that is the Wild Rim, an unforgiving section of the Andromeda Galaxy in which heroes ascend into mythology.

The Casarians, meanwhile, are the cornerstone of the setting’s inspiration. I recall the distinct moment that sparked their creation. It was nearly a decade ago when I watched MacArthur, starring Gregory Peck. That was when the first seed was planted: what would a sustainable society without civilian control over the military look like? Later on, a second question appeared: what circumstances would make a society accept such a reality? When trying to answer those questions, the Casarian Star Kingdom took shape.

The Casarian traditions come from those I’ve experienced first-hand or researched, reflecting the pluralistic nature of their founders. They are a diverse group of humans, and I aim to reflect the full cultural breadth of humanity in them.

In this pluralistic context also lies the foundation of the Casarian political structure. To develop it, I studied political systems from across the globe, particularly the principle of subsidiarity within the European Union, and also online debates on interstellar governance, specifically the YouTuber EckhartsLadder, who also discussed the principle within a Star Wars context. I maintained a similar approach for the speculative technologies by using content creators as inspiration sources for specific deep dives.

Now, I must also pay tribute to House of Steel, the companion book to David Weber’s Honorverse, which has been a pivotal blueprint for the wider Astral Lion universe. In short, it’s a cocktail of various influences, from Dune’s philosophy of scattering humanity to the immense scale of The Legend of the Galactic Heroes. Together, these influences give the broader setting its distinctive flavour.

What does Shaera’s khersuit represent beyond its practical role in keeping her alive?​

The khersuits symbolise the cultural barriers we face when interacting with other groups. It’s the physical embodiment that shrouds an outsider’s perspective of a specific culture or group. With time, that erodes, but it is never fully erased.

This theme is also present in the first-contact short stories centred around High Admiral Zhikov: who is more alike us? People of the same blood but radically different ideologies? Or completely different creatures who share a similar worldview? You can read these free short stories on my website, and they will be further explored in subsequent stories if the future allows it.

How did you balance the intimate relationship between Luke and Shaera with the novel’s larger military and diplomatic conflicts?​

It was a conscious decision for sure, and something I had to repress as a university student specialising in international relations specifically. I had prior experience writing diplomatic stand-offs; however, I wanted this story to be romance first. Initially I thought about adding chapters of Legate Khaledi and Admiral Geram throughout the story, but I felt this would detract both from the story and the challenge I set out for myself. Hence why I’ve kept them solely in the prologue and epilogue to provide context and stakes.

Now, I realise not everyone might read these, and that’s where the other balancing act comes in by integrating the (military) history of both Kherrians and Casarians into the living cultural memory explored in the cultural interactions between the novel’s full cast. The Casarians are admittedly at an advantage over the Kherrians on this aspect because they’ve processed plenty more strife than Shaera’s people, as seen through the poems recited by Luke. That’s the main approach I used to balance the political background while maintaining the intimacy between the two protagonists.

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