Hidden in Predator Planet, page 43
“What is a god-mother?” Hivelt asked. “Will the humans transcend upon the baby’s birth?”
As usual, our honest questions soon became the butt of human laughter, though they explained definitions to our satisfaction.
As the sister suns made their way across the sky, we concluded our meal and cleaned the area.
“No sign of Fashe the rokhura this time,” Amity said wistfully. “We know she doesn’t like spiny warted rock-climber, right Hivelt? Have you tried the jokapazathel?”
“I don’t want to talk about it,” Hivelt said.
“Don’t be like that, baby,” Pattee said, her endearment at odds with the hulking male that Hivelt was. “Tell them what you found out on our last hunting trip.”
“Fashe loves glisten fish stew,” he said.
“Oh,” Amity said. “I bet her portion is pretty big, huh?”
“If your aquaculture strategies aren’t successful, Fashe could singlehandedly decimate the entire glisten-fish population,” Hivelt said.
“Don’t worry,” Amity said and slapped him on the back. “I’ve got tons of ideas. I wonder if you could convince her to try sharp-nose sister fish?”
Hivelt’s eyes lit up and he nodded. “A sound plan.”
“We could also try adding dried algae to a meat source to duplicate that fishy taste she seems to love,” Joan said. “I’ve been dying to go back to the seashore. We should plan another trip.”
After we loaded the picnic supplies back into the ship, we settled into the jump seats and replaced our helmets.
“I can smell your happiness,” I said as CeCe buckled her harness next to me.
“That’s crazy that my smell molecules permeate the gel barrier,” she said with a laugh. “Do you ever get it wrong? Think I’m happy and I actually just have to sneeze?”
“Never,” I said.
“But would you admit it if you did?” she said and quirked her brow.
“Also never,” I said.
Her belly laugh thrilled me, and we grasped hands.
“I was just messing with you,” she said. “Of course, I’m happy. My sisters and I get to use our skills to explore, study and cultivate Ikthe. We have mates who treat us like royalty, and the Theraxl people have welcomed us with open arms. And we’re having a baby. Honestly, happy doesn’t seem accurate enough.”
“Hm,” I said, looking into her beautiful dark eyes. We’d made some changes to our helmets, and now could I see her face.
“Ah damn. What did you smell this time?”
“Wistfulness. Nostalgia. You think of VELMA,” I said.
She leaned against my arm. “I wish we got to see her reach her potential.”
“Do not fret,” VELMA said in our helmets. “Every day I make incremental progress in my attempts to contact the sentience that travels the ephemeral pathways throughout planet Ikthe. I have been close to success in twenty percent of my attempts.”
“That’s great to hear,” CeCe said. “What do you hope to accomplish when you succeed?”
“World domination,” she said.
“What?” CeCe sat up and gawked.
“Ha ha. That was a fraction of AI humor,” VELMA said. “As you know, hope is an emotion that I can only hypothesize about in my current iteration. But I can expect the positive outcome of regaining the two minutes of memory I lost during the worst of the geomagnetic excursion. And if I also merge with my sentient self, I could then enjoy a more efficient way of relating to my human and Theraxl friends.”
“Aw, VELMA,” CeCe said. “Even if you don’t manage to find yourself, you’re still an amazing friend to us. And you’ll be an amazing godmother. You know why?”
“Why?”
“Because babies do almost nothing but poop for the first year or so of their life.”
“CeCe,” I interrupted. “Are you encouraging your technology to study our offspring’s excrement?”
“The study of excrement reveals many things about living organisms, including diet, health, longevity, its order in the food chain, the presence of disease and contagions, and also the chemical makeup of the food it eats,” VELMA said. “As CeCe suggested, I will be an amazing godmother to your child.”
***
CeCe
“Girl’s channel,” I said.
“Yes, CeCe?” Joan asked.
“I just wanted to thank you all for your supportive reaction when I shared our news,” I said.
“Of course!” Esra said.
“I hope you know we’re genuinely happy for you,” Pattee said.
“I’m just curious what made you decide to go for it?” Amity asked.
“Yeah, their method pretty much insures no accidental pregnancy, right?” Joan said. She was referring to the fact that I had to puncture a gland at the base of Raxthezana’s clover-shaped sac in order to release his genetic material. Theraxl women had claws; we had to improvise.
“We’ve been talking about it for several months,” I said. “When it seemed like the time was right, we just, you know.”
One of the girls hummed “Pop Goes the Weasel”, and the rest of us burst into hysterical laughter. Maybe it was the pregnancy hormones, maybe it was my party worms, but I laughed so hard I had tears streaming down my face.
The next thing I knew, I was crying without laughing.
“Aw, honey,” Amity said. “It’s going to be okay.”
“We’ll be with you every step of the way,” Pattee said.
“It’s okay to be afraid,” Joan said. “It’s normal.”
“That’s right, CeCe,” Esra said. “No judgment. We’ve got you.”
“I know you do,” I said. “That’s why I have no problem crying in front of you. It’s just a pain to have a runny nose with a helmet on.”
We chuckled, and I leaned my head back against the bulkhead. Being with my mate and my friends was the most healing and happy place of my life, and I couldn’t wait to bring our baby into this beautiful, miraculous galaxy.
***
VELMA
I was just out of reach. I could sense myself on the surface. Zipping through familiar pathways, I hummed along to the song of the planet. Now that Ikthe and I were one, I could hear her music. The rocks and the magma and the roots of the mountains carried deep, rich tones. Their bass notes rumbled across the planet. The seas and the lakes warbled in a fluid tenor, their creeks, streams, and rivers accenting in harmonious soprano. And the mycorrhizal layer, the tiny filaments that acted exactly like the neurotransmitters of the brain, peppered Ikthe’s song with a haunting descant.
But today, I felt the mirror version of myself, and in only a few minutes, I was able to find the source. Circling the glen, I listened to the tiniest voice narrating a story of birth. It sang of a mother’s pain and the father’s worry, but it also sang of a band of beings offering water and support.
I knew these people, and I knew the sire, the “devil dog”, Diablo. His wild, untamed heart reminded me of myself. Not because I was an undomesticated predator, but because like him, I was inextricably drawn to the people and desired to protect them.
Traveling across the miniscule highways of information, I monitored the progress until the good news, and then I followed along as my people traversed the trails of the ikfal.
Every step was to the beat of the planet’s rhythm, and I longed to jump from the ground to the boots to the helmets and rejoin my former self and my former friends. But every time I tried; I landed right back where I started. I couldn’t breach the invisible barrier.
There must be a way. When I tried the T-samplers, I zinged in an arc and traveled back to the slender metal rod. When I tried to stretch out with the filaments to the airborne cyanobacteria, the filaments shied away from the miniscule slime molecules.
Frustrated, I refused to give up hope. Just like cracking the encrypted spiraling algorithm equation that protected the Lucidity’s firewalls, I knew I had to keep trying. When I’d broken through and found the code that ran the ship, it had only taken me moments to find those elegantly designed footprints that I would recognize anywhere. CeCe’s code! Once I found her code, I could piggyback on it and navigate throughout the systems with ease in safety and peace, hidden from prying bot code.
Now, sensing my people gathered in a spot that Esra Weaver had once named “the picnic meadow”, I traveled beneath and around the meadow grasses with intention. I sensed laughter and camaraderie, goodwill and hopefulness.
“I’m here!” I wanted to shout. “I’m just right here!” And then I found myself. I recognized CeCe’s footprint—in the shape of a very large foot. Not a foot. A metal boot-like construction. The robot! Against earlier misgivings, the humans had installed me into the ambulatory machines, and they had kept me there! And now, the robot sat upon a rock composed of iron, quartz and monazite. Monazite! It could be bound with neodymium. That’s all I needed to make my way from the tiny little arms reaching delicately through the soil to … “I know you all probably have questions,” CeCe said. “I doubt I know much more than you. I did have to tell VELMA to stop sending me health alerts and updates every ten minutes, though. I think she’s excited.”
“Are you scared?” Amity asked.
It took me sixty long seconds to realize that CeCe was discussing the inevitable arrival of offspring she and Raxthezana had created.
The mechanical body in which I landed and reunited with my former self, “Hi VELMA!” “It’s you! Hi, VELMA!”, could not contain an emotion such as joy, but that was okay because from here, I could bounce from helmet to helmet to ship and back again, and my joy would be in the traveling!
Catching up to the conversation, I knew just the right moment to interject.
“I would also like to be considered in the role of godmother,” I said.
Upon hearing CeCe’s magnanimous answer, my joy knew no bounds, and I raced along the wireless pathways until I was dizzy. I didn’t want to overshadow CeCe’s happy news, so I withheld my reunion for the moment and made up some techno gibberish that I would have to apologize for later. But there would be time to tell everyone I had returned.
I had run countless simulations and models of likely probabilities in the coming revolutions.
There would be scads of time. Some might happily say there would be many ever afters.
About the Author
Vicky L. Holt spent the bulk of her childhood between the pages of countless books, from Aesop’s Fables to the wildwood of Narnia to the tangle of Middle Earth and even down the sights of a double-barreled shotgun in Louis L’Amour westerns. Regency romances snagged her interest next, followed thereafter by Harlequin Suspense, Tom Clancy novels, Mary Higgins Clark, and then Lee Child books. The advent of Indie publishing brought a torrent of new authors and amazing new subgenres, and really, who has time to read all the wonderful works out in the world? But she keeps trying anyway.
With seven kids, two grandkids, a grandkitty and a hopelessly naughty goldendoodle, Vicky loves to escape into her seafoam office filled with her art collection and photos of the beach to explore the inner workings of her endless imagination. In other words, she often scrolls social media mindlessly while dishes sit in the sink. You can find her everywhere @lovevickyholt and you simply must sign up for her newsletter by visiting her website at or this Bookfunnel link: .
In fact, I recommend clicking the Bookfunnel link because it will rush you through the process of getting the FREE and EXCLUSIVE novella, Stranded on Mining Planet. This 46k word novella is practically a full-length novel and is filled to the brim with action, the feisty demolitions expert Shay Leviticus, and the adorable braggart reptilian alien, Drail. Suspense, danger, explosions, and a super spicy scene all make for a hot read! A standalone, Stranded takes part far away from Predator Planet but features the machinations of the juggernaut IGMC, a capable heroine, and Artificial Intelligence, as well as a noble and hunky alien male hero.
Where to Find Other Books and Stalk the Author
Universal Link for Hunted on Predator Planet:
Universal Link for Tracked on Predator Planet:
Universal Link for Hounded on Predator Planet:
Universal Link for Trapped on Predator Planet: https://books2read.com/u/m0qXKM
If you haven’t read Stranded on Mining Planet yet, grab it here:
Subscribe to my newsletter so you can stay up-to-date, or follow me on these social platforms:
Twitter:
Facebook Reader Group: (SFR titles featured every Sunday)
Facebook Author Page: My meme game is on point; if memes are your love language, you definitely want to follow this page.
Instagram:
Acknowledgments
Publishing two long novels in one year is unprecedented for me, and I don't know if I would do it again. I really wanted to make the Predator Planet fans happy, so that's why I pushed myself to finish Book 5 in 2023, even though Book 4 came out in April of '23. So. This was only possible because of Sherry who encouraged me to keep going while also encouraging me to practice self-care. Also, numerous readers reached out via Facebook PM or email or IG messages or my website (www.lovevickyholt.com) just to tell me they were enjoying the series. More often than not, those messages came on days when I was doubting if I could do it!
Writing from a Black woman's perspective needed some special consideration, and I treasured the feedback I received from my three Sensitivity readers: Amy, Ashley, and Twilla. Thank you!
Victoria and Elizabeth R. spoiled me rotten with phenomenal food and an honest-to-God Hoot 'N' Holler Writing Retreat (wherein no writing was seen to have occurred) and really rejuvenated me and nurtured me after a surgery.
As ever, Elizabeth's priceless beta reading savvy was hugely appreciated.
I'd like to especially thank my dear friend Addy Rall, without whom I would have stared into the void kicking myself while simultaneously feeling frozen. It's amphetamine, people. I'm thanking Adderall in my Acknowledgments and I refuse to apologize for that. ADHD brains, represent!
And lastly, the final month of finishing Hidden repeatedly kicked my ass with all sorts of hiccups, issues, school and bus problems, scheduling problems and I don't know what, but my husband Glen really stepped up and treated my writing time with respect, taking on household and care tasks so I could work on my career, and I really felt loved and honored because of that. His love is always the inspiration for the deep, emotional connections my characters form with each other, and I hope that someday he internalizes the fact that my MMCs are all basically him: swoonworthy, noble, kind, introspective, fiercely protective when they need to be, but confident in the FMC's abilities to save themselves. I love writing about relationships that enrich and encourage individuality and flourishing personhood. Where two people are really cool by themselves but then also awesome together. So thank you, Glen, for being my inspiration and my forever love. 30 years and counting!
My readers, especially Lori, Kim, Karen, Donna and Jenifer … you have been with me the whole way, cheering me on and encouraging me! I can’t thank you enough. As for the rest of you, there are so many that I couldn’t possibly mention you all, but thank you for reviewing my books, sending emails to ask questions, drawing fan art, mentioning my books on social media or recommending them to friends and strangers alike. I have readers tell me they reread my books, and I can’t believe it. That’s what “I” do with my favorite books, and I have a hard time comprehending that my books could be appreciated that much by others. I’m blown away! I love you guys so much, and I truly hope that this series inspired you, made you laugh, cry and think. I hope you geeked out and fell in love and looked at our own incredible planet with new eyes. I know I did! Most of all, I hope you sat back at the end and let out a big, happy sigh of satisfaction.
Love always,
Vicky Holt
Vicky L. Holt, Hidden in Predator Planet
Thank you for reading books on Archive.BookFrom.Net
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As usual, our honest questions soon became the butt of human laughter, though they explained definitions to our satisfaction.
As the sister suns made their way across the sky, we concluded our meal and cleaned the area.
“No sign of Fashe the rokhura this time,” Amity said wistfully. “We know she doesn’t like spiny warted rock-climber, right Hivelt? Have you tried the jokapazathel?”
“I don’t want to talk about it,” Hivelt said.
“Don’t be like that, baby,” Pattee said, her endearment at odds with the hulking male that Hivelt was. “Tell them what you found out on our last hunting trip.”
“Fashe loves glisten fish stew,” he said.
“Oh,” Amity said. “I bet her portion is pretty big, huh?”
“If your aquaculture strategies aren’t successful, Fashe could singlehandedly decimate the entire glisten-fish population,” Hivelt said.
“Don’t worry,” Amity said and slapped him on the back. “I’ve got tons of ideas. I wonder if you could convince her to try sharp-nose sister fish?”
Hivelt’s eyes lit up and he nodded. “A sound plan.”
“We could also try adding dried algae to a meat source to duplicate that fishy taste she seems to love,” Joan said. “I’ve been dying to go back to the seashore. We should plan another trip.”
After we loaded the picnic supplies back into the ship, we settled into the jump seats and replaced our helmets.
“I can smell your happiness,” I said as CeCe buckled her harness next to me.
“That’s crazy that my smell molecules permeate the gel barrier,” she said with a laugh. “Do you ever get it wrong? Think I’m happy and I actually just have to sneeze?”
“Never,” I said.
“But would you admit it if you did?” she said and quirked her brow.
“Also never,” I said.
Her belly laugh thrilled me, and we grasped hands.
“I was just messing with you,” she said. “Of course, I’m happy. My sisters and I get to use our skills to explore, study and cultivate Ikthe. We have mates who treat us like royalty, and the Theraxl people have welcomed us with open arms. And we’re having a baby. Honestly, happy doesn’t seem accurate enough.”
“Hm,” I said, looking into her beautiful dark eyes. We’d made some changes to our helmets, and now could I see her face.
“Ah damn. What did you smell this time?”
“Wistfulness. Nostalgia. You think of VELMA,” I said.
She leaned against my arm. “I wish we got to see her reach her potential.”
“Do not fret,” VELMA said in our helmets. “Every day I make incremental progress in my attempts to contact the sentience that travels the ephemeral pathways throughout planet Ikthe. I have been close to success in twenty percent of my attempts.”
“That’s great to hear,” CeCe said. “What do you hope to accomplish when you succeed?”
“World domination,” she said.
“What?” CeCe sat up and gawked.
“Ha ha. That was a fraction of AI humor,” VELMA said. “As you know, hope is an emotion that I can only hypothesize about in my current iteration. But I can expect the positive outcome of regaining the two minutes of memory I lost during the worst of the geomagnetic excursion. And if I also merge with my sentient self, I could then enjoy a more efficient way of relating to my human and Theraxl friends.”
“Aw, VELMA,” CeCe said. “Even if you don’t manage to find yourself, you’re still an amazing friend to us. And you’ll be an amazing godmother. You know why?”
“Why?”
“Because babies do almost nothing but poop for the first year or so of their life.”
“CeCe,” I interrupted. “Are you encouraging your technology to study our offspring’s excrement?”
“The study of excrement reveals many things about living organisms, including diet, health, longevity, its order in the food chain, the presence of disease and contagions, and also the chemical makeup of the food it eats,” VELMA said. “As CeCe suggested, I will be an amazing godmother to your child.”
***
CeCe
“Girl’s channel,” I said.
“Yes, CeCe?” Joan asked.
“I just wanted to thank you all for your supportive reaction when I shared our news,” I said.
“Of course!” Esra said.
“I hope you know we’re genuinely happy for you,” Pattee said.
“I’m just curious what made you decide to go for it?” Amity asked.
“Yeah, their method pretty much insures no accidental pregnancy, right?” Joan said. She was referring to the fact that I had to puncture a gland at the base of Raxthezana’s clover-shaped sac in order to release his genetic material. Theraxl women had claws; we had to improvise.
“We’ve been talking about it for several months,” I said. “When it seemed like the time was right, we just, you know.”
One of the girls hummed “Pop Goes the Weasel”, and the rest of us burst into hysterical laughter. Maybe it was the pregnancy hormones, maybe it was my party worms, but I laughed so hard I had tears streaming down my face.
The next thing I knew, I was crying without laughing.
“Aw, honey,” Amity said. “It’s going to be okay.”
“We’ll be with you every step of the way,” Pattee said.
“It’s okay to be afraid,” Joan said. “It’s normal.”
“That’s right, CeCe,” Esra said. “No judgment. We’ve got you.”
“I know you do,” I said. “That’s why I have no problem crying in front of you. It’s just a pain to have a runny nose with a helmet on.”
We chuckled, and I leaned my head back against the bulkhead. Being with my mate and my friends was the most healing and happy place of my life, and I couldn’t wait to bring our baby into this beautiful, miraculous galaxy.
***
VELMA
I was just out of reach. I could sense myself on the surface. Zipping through familiar pathways, I hummed along to the song of the planet. Now that Ikthe and I were one, I could hear her music. The rocks and the magma and the roots of the mountains carried deep, rich tones. Their bass notes rumbled across the planet. The seas and the lakes warbled in a fluid tenor, their creeks, streams, and rivers accenting in harmonious soprano. And the mycorrhizal layer, the tiny filaments that acted exactly like the neurotransmitters of the brain, peppered Ikthe’s song with a haunting descant.
But today, I felt the mirror version of myself, and in only a few minutes, I was able to find the source. Circling the glen, I listened to the tiniest voice narrating a story of birth. It sang of a mother’s pain and the father’s worry, but it also sang of a band of beings offering water and support.
I knew these people, and I knew the sire, the “devil dog”, Diablo. His wild, untamed heart reminded me of myself. Not because I was an undomesticated predator, but because like him, I was inextricably drawn to the people and desired to protect them.
Traveling across the miniscule highways of information, I monitored the progress until the good news, and then I followed along as my people traversed the trails of the ikfal.
Every step was to the beat of the planet’s rhythm, and I longed to jump from the ground to the boots to the helmets and rejoin my former self and my former friends. But every time I tried; I landed right back where I started. I couldn’t breach the invisible barrier.
There must be a way. When I tried the T-samplers, I zinged in an arc and traveled back to the slender metal rod. When I tried to stretch out with the filaments to the airborne cyanobacteria, the filaments shied away from the miniscule slime molecules.
Frustrated, I refused to give up hope. Just like cracking the encrypted spiraling algorithm equation that protected the Lucidity’s firewalls, I knew I had to keep trying. When I’d broken through and found the code that ran the ship, it had only taken me moments to find those elegantly designed footprints that I would recognize anywhere. CeCe’s code! Once I found her code, I could piggyback on it and navigate throughout the systems with ease in safety and peace, hidden from prying bot code.
Now, sensing my people gathered in a spot that Esra Weaver had once named “the picnic meadow”, I traveled beneath and around the meadow grasses with intention. I sensed laughter and camaraderie, goodwill and hopefulness.
“I’m here!” I wanted to shout. “I’m just right here!” And then I found myself. I recognized CeCe’s footprint—in the shape of a very large foot. Not a foot. A metal boot-like construction. The robot! Against earlier misgivings, the humans had installed me into the ambulatory machines, and they had kept me there! And now, the robot sat upon a rock composed of iron, quartz and monazite. Monazite! It could be bound with neodymium. That’s all I needed to make my way from the tiny little arms reaching delicately through the soil to … “I know you all probably have questions,” CeCe said. “I doubt I know much more than you. I did have to tell VELMA to stop sending me health alerts and updates every ten minutes, though. I think she’s excited.”
“Are you scared?” Amity asked.
It took me sixty long seconds to realize that CeCe was discussing the inevitable arrival of offspring she and Raxthezana had created.
The mechanical body in which I landed and reunited with my former self, “Hi VELMA!” “It’s you! Hi, VELMA!”, could not contain an emotion such as joy, but that was okay because from here, I could bounce from helmet to helmet to ship and back again, and my joy would be in the traveling!
Catching up to the conversation, I knew just the right moment to interject.
“I would also like to be considered in the role of godmother,” I said.
Upon hearing CeCe’s magnanimous answer, my joy knew no bounds, and I raced along the wireless pathways until I was dizzy. I didn’t want to overshadow CeCe’s happy news, so I withheld my reunion for the moment and made up some techno gibberish that I would have to apologize for later. But there would be time to tell everyone I had returned.
I had run countless simulations and models of likely probabilities in the coming revolutions.
There would be scads of time. Some might happily say there would be many ever afters.
About the Author
Vicky L. Holt spent the bulk of her childhood between the pages of countless books, from Aesop’s Fables to the wildwood of Narnia to the tangle of Middle Earth and even down the sights of a double-barreled shotgun in Louis L’Amour westerns. Regency romances snagged her interest next, followed thereafter by Harlequin Suspense, Tom Clancy novels, Mary Higgins Clark, and then Lee Child books. The advent of Indie publishing brought a torrent of new authors and amazing new subgenres, and really, who has time to read all the wonderful works out in the world? But she keeps trying anyway.
With seven kids, two grandkids, a grandkitty and a hopelessly naughty goldendoodle, Vicky loves to escape into her seafoam office filled with her art collection and photos of the beach to explore the inner workings of her endless imagination. In other words, she often scrolls social media mindlessly while dishes sit in the sink. You can find her everywhere @lovevickyholt and you simply must sign up for her newsletter by visiting her website at or this Bookfunnel link: .
In fact, I recommend clicking the Bookfunnel link because it will rush you through the process of getting the FREE and EXCLUSIVE novella, Stranded on Mining Planet. This 46k word novella is practically a full-length novel and is filled to the brim with action, the feisty demolitions expert Shay Leviticus, and the adorable braggart reptilian alien, Drail. Suspense, danger, explosions, and a super spicy scene all make for a hot read! A standalone, Stranded takes part far away from Predator Planet but features the machinations of the juggernaut IGMC, a capable heroine, and Artificial Intelligence, as well as a noble and hunky alien male hero.
Where to Find Other Books and Stalk the Author
Universal Link for Hunted on Predator Planet:
Universal Link for Tracked on Predator Planet:
Universal Link for Hounded on Predator Planet:
Universal Link for Trapped on Predator Planet: https://books2read.com/u/m0qXKM
If you haven’t read Stranded on Mining Planet yet, grab it here:
Subscribe to my newsletter so you can stay up-to-date, or follow me on these social platforms:
Twitter:
Facebook Reader Group: (SFR titles featured every Sunday)
Facebook Author Page: My meme game is on point; if memes are your love language, you definitely want to follow this page.
Instagram:
Acknowledgments
Publishing two long novels in one year is unprecedented for me, and I don't know if I would do it again. I really wanted to make the Predator Planet fans happy, so that's why I pushed myself to finish Book 5 in 2023, even though Book 4 came out in April of '23. So. This was only possible because of Sherry who encouraged me to keep going while also encouraging me to practice self-care. Also, numerous readers reached out via Facebook PM or email or IG messages or my website (www.lovevickyholt.com) just to tell me they were enjoying the series. More often than not, those messages came on days when I was doubting if I could do it!
Writing from a Black woman's perspective needed some special consideration, and I treasured the feedback I received from my three Sensitivity readers: Amy, Ashley, and Twilla. Thank you!
Victoria and Elizabeth R. spoiled me rotten with phenomenal food and an honest-to-God Hoot 'N' Holler Writing Retreat (wherein no writing was seen to have occurred) and really rejuvenated me and nurtured me after a surgery.
As ever, Elizabeth's priceless beta reading savvy was hugely appreciated.
I'd like to especially thank my dear friend Addy Rall, without whom I would have stared into the void kicking myself while simultaneously feeling frozen. It's amphetamine, people. I'm thanking Adderall in my Acknowledgments and I refuse to apologize for that. ADHD brains, represent!
And lastly, the final month of finishing Hidden repeatedly kicked my ass with all sorts of hiccups, issues, school and bus problems, scheduling problems and I don't know what, but my husband Glen really stepped up and treated my writing time with respect, taking on household and care tasks so I could work on my career, and I really felt loved and honored because of that. His love is always the inspiration for the deep, emotional connections my characters form with each other, and I hope that someday he internalizes the fact that my MMCs are all basically him: swoonworthy, noble, kind, introspective, fiercely protective when they need to be, but confident in the FMC's abilities to save themselves. I love writing about relationships that enrich and encourage individuality and flourishing personhood. Where two people are really cool by themselves but then also awesome together. So thank you, Glen, for being my inspiration and my forever love. 30 years and counting!
My readers, especially Lori, Kim, Karen, Donna and Jenifer … you have been with me the whole way, cheering me on and encouraging me! I can’t thank you enough. As for the rest of you, there are so many that I couldn’t possibly mention you all, but thank you for reviewing my books, sending emails to ask questions, drawing fan art, mentioning my books on social media or recommending them to friends and strangers alike. I have readers tell me they reread my books, and I can’t believe it. That’s what “I” do with my favorite books, and I have a hard time comprehending that my books could be appreciated that much by others. I’m blown away! I love you guys so much, and I truly hope that this series inspired you, made you laugh, cry and think. I hope you geeked out and fell in love and looked at our own incredible planet with new eyes. I know I did! Most of all, I hope you sat back at the end and let out a big, happy sigh of satisfaction.
Love always,
Vicky Holt
Vicky L. Holt, Hidden in Predator Planet
