Hey, folks — new story publication! Pleased to note that “Paper Star,” one of my Jump Space stories, is now available at The Decameron Project. I don’t publish a story very often, so please picture me jumping up and down with glee. 
Woot! This is #6 of the published “Jump Space” stories, and two of my beta readers said they think it’s the best one so far.
This story works as a stand-alone, though I do want to note that it’s a prequel to _The Stars Change_, my novella-in-stories, and does contain mild spoilers for that book. TSC is only 40K words, so y’know, you could read that first, and then go read this. It’s something like $6.99 on Kindle right now? And the rest of the Jump Space stories are free to read on my website.
Decameron is a joint Patreon project set up by Jo Walton, with a host of terrific stories by many many writers. If you’re looking to sample and try a lot of writers, this is a fabulous way to do so. Payment is $1 per creation, or $30 per month if we post a story every day. IF YOU WANT TO PAY LESS you can set a monthly limit ($5, $10, etc.) to let us know how many stories a month you would like to support to pledge a lower monthly amount.
So the short version is, it’ll cost you $1 minimum to read this story and all the rest (62 so far). A little more if you want to send some pennies towards all the authors. (If you’re feeling flush, you can also pledge more / story, and these humble scribblers will be grateful.)
Hope you enjoy it! (And oh, if you start at the beginning, Jo gives you a frame story that carries you through the series.)
*****
“A short man, mixed-race by the look of him, smiled at Réalta across her counter. “Young lady, my name is Arvin O’Hanlon. I hope you can help me with a small difficulty.” A pair of old-fashioned glasses perched on his brown nose; she couldn’t remember the last time she’d seen someone wearing glasses. Maybe a stylish fad on his planet-of-origin? More likely, he was one of those human-firsters, so against genetic mods that he hadn’t even had his eyesight corrected.
But it wasn’t any of her business why the man wore glasses; she smiled back professionally. After a month on the job, she had the smile down. “I’ll do my best to help you, ser. What seems to be the problem?”
He said, “The weight allowance is only thirty kilos for a third-class ticket to Earth, and second-class is far more than I can afford. But I was hoping to bring forty kilos; I have some sentimental memorabilia I’d hate to leave behind.” The man slid the baggage form across to her, and Réalta glanced down, then froze. Underneath it was a hundred-credit chip, sticking out….”