Dirt is for rebels. “Life On Dirt is jam-packed with indelible characters and lush prose that makes you think of such top-tier ‘coming of age’ tales as The Dark Beyond the Stars and The Testament of Jessie Lamb, and the kind of tech-heavy and often biting first-person narrative that might make Andy Weir smile.” ~ Dayton Ward, NYT Bestselling Author, ”Star Trek: Headlong Flight” Sixty years ago the United States Space Service was created and empowered to protect the potentially unlimited knowledge and wealth of space for the benefit of the whole of humankind. Guardians of fusion technology and everything above the atmosphere, the Space Service controls the flow of people, materiel, and information between Earth and the space stations, Luna, and Mars. Everyone in space is bound to the Space Service, and all spacers belong to the Service-mandated racial elite. The Space Service owns the stars—and it does not intend to share. Seventeen-year-old Mara Duval, born in space, was destined to be part of humanity’s first mission to the moons of Jupiter, until a medical accident left her quarantined on dirt forever. But dirt is not the blighted wasteland she’d been taught it was, and the Space Service is holding humanity’s future hostage behind a wall of lies. Now Mara is fighting back by transmitting videos of the truth to friends in space, speaking out whenever she can, and sharing technology and secrets with her Dirt ally Jael Alden, a young visionary determined to break through the Space Service’s racial barrier. She knows she doesn’t have much time until the Space Service realizes what she’s doing and stops her. But until they do, Mara’s going to make the most of her life on dirt. “Kevin Killiany’s delightfully immersive writing sucks you right into the characters, their situation, their location, and their lives. A most compelling read.” ~ Keith R. A. DeCandido, Author of Novels in “Star Trek,” “Supernatural,” “Sleepy Hollow,” and More

Dirt is for losers. “DOWN TO DIRT is YA hard science fiction with an attitude, full of technical details as engaging as the characters. I was immediately drawn into the story.” ~ Kevin J. Anderson, New York Times bestselling author of ETERNITY’S MIND It’s 2021, and humanity has been in space for half a century. Giant space stations are hubs of scientific and industrial research, colonies are spreading across the moon and Mars, and sixteen-year-old Mara Duval, born and raised on Tombaugh Station, is training to be part of humanity’s first mission to the moons of Jupiter. Life is full of possibilities—opportunities denied those deemed unfit for life in space. The unintelligent, the diseased, the mentally unstable, and the criminal—all who have been rejected by the Space Service—are condemned to live their lives on dirt, a planet everyone knows but no one mentions. Every spacer has relatives on dirt, family members who failed to qualify for space. Some are remembered, some are forgotten; but all are left behind. To Mara’s horror, her parents have mandated she understand her past before she can pursue her future. If she wants to follow her dream to Jupiter, she must leave the safety of space and get to know her uncle, aunt, and cousin confined to dirt. Given no choice, she submits to medical procedures and intense physical training—bracing herself to survive weeks of exile amid violence, disease, and dangers she can only imagine. But nothing could prepare Mara for what she discovers when she goes down to dirt.