Ed Robins' Ten Cent Universe

All I wanted was to make time with the sensuous Jesse Alderman, but cantankerous Jazz had been accused of murder. Just some girl I’d met once. Still, sometimes you know an innocent face when you see one. Too bad no one will listen to me – not even my best friend.

But when the consort of a royal is murdered under similar circumstances, suddenly everyone is all ears. Now the Earls who run the Starship Australis expect me to sort the damned thing out! And I’ve managed to piss off a group of vigilantes who seem to have only one thing in mind: making me dead.

All I wanted was to put my past behind me, but another little girl is dead and my ex has accused my not-quite-boss of being a serial killer. The rub is I already put that psycho to death with my own hands. Or could be I killed an innocent man.

I’ve spent a lifetime hiding behind sarcasm when I could; violence when it was available. Drinking and bleeding away a whole lotta bad. Gonna have to confront it all, including how I lost the love of my life, in order to find a murdering psychopath stalking the corridors of the Starship Australis. And, maybe, I’ll find out just what kinda man I really am.

All I wanted was to never feel anything again. Manipulated, betrayed, and causing nothing but misery for my best friend, I'd lost all hope for a happy ending. For fourteen months, I deadened my emotions, and self-will, with the drug Copa, and that made it possible to go on living--if you wanna call it that.

Then an old acquaintance and her son go missing and, as it turns out, I'm just the guy to find them. Lucky me. Involuntarily ripped outta my high, I hit the corridors of the Starship Australis only to find more has been taken from me than I ever expected. The lives of a boy and his mother hang in the balance as I teeter on the edge, trapped in a tangle of cons, lies and betrayals that not everyone wants unraveled. As I come closer to the truth, it's only a question of which will put me in more danger: my mouth or my addiction.

On the planet Gaea, opportunities are hard to come by. Setting out for the Tanami frontier, young Dalton Reid hopes to make his fortune with nothing but his horse and the last few bits in his pocket. Before he can get started, though, he loses his savings to the dastardly Roscoe, professional cattle rustler and murderer.

There’s no shortage of folks in Hensonville willing to give Reid the education he needs to survive, if he’ll do what they say. Paloma Griswell’s ready to work him to the bone on her ranch. The straight and narrow is what old Marshal Rawlins expects. Bellyaching Chip Reegan just wants to put him in his place. Even Roscoe offers to make him part of his gang as they prepare for their biggest heist yet.

Only Reid can decide what type of man he wants to be as he seeks fortune and fame–or will it be infamy?

Ed Robins has been writing since the age of eleven. Robins’ father was an avid consumer of speculative fiction and raised Ed on a steady diet of television shows, books and movies to spark his imagination.

If there’s anything Robins likes more than science fiction, it’s old things, especially books. It inspired him to create The Ten Cent Universe by mashing together the styles of old dime store masters with modern science fiction.

Robins currently resides in Wichita, KS with his wife and two children, and tells too many "dad jokes".