I had submitted a short story to a contest last year. Last month I got notice that from the thousands of entries, I didn’t win. Now that the story is mine again, I plan on rewriting it to contain adventures beyond the contest limit of 17,000 words. I want to add more of the perils and obstacles that Robert faces as he attempts to raise the natives of the planet ‘Sonik’ above their current medieval level with education of Earth language and science.

The story titled ‘Shoulder Fairy’ is about Robert Vasquez’ journey to the star Procyon A where humans have an outpost on a world that the natives call ‘Sonik’. He brings hundreds of electronic tablets full of educational apps and plans on being a missionary for education.

The planet has two races of people: small (17 cm) flying people with wings called ‘fairies’ (in Earth language) and the ‘tarlocks’ which are human sized and don’t fly.

Robert finds things don’t go as simply and smoothly as he had expected. There are dangers and medical hazards to living outside the human outpost among the natives. The humans in the outpost present other problems. Robert finds that his definition of success may need to be re-evaluated, and maybe include his own survival.

I expect to publish the work this year. Shoulder Fairy will still be short, maybe half the size of a novel. It is not in the Tomek universe with my previous books. I hope to provide an update of my progress each month. Thank you to any who read my slow blog.