Northstar titles in the market

Audiofile Earphones Award Winner

​
14 Degrees Below Zero - Quinton Skinner / Fentum Press Winter 2020
Think of this thriller as Gone Girl meets The Shining. In the dead of a Minnesota winter a man slowly becomes unhinged in the wake of his wife's death and loss of his corporate job finds he will do anything to protect his daughter

Good Craic - Jim Walsh / University of Minnesota Press Winter 2020
A series of essays from a curious, embedded journalist in love with the people of Minnesota, and the fabric that binds them together from art, music, politics and the people that power them

​
Works in progress - publisher inquiries welcome

Terminal Dispatch - The First in a Trilogy - Dawson Nichols

Tab’s parents are in a religious sect that doesn’t allow integrative tech, so he can’t get the skeletal reinforcements or gecko grips that would allow him to play normal sports.  He can’t get neural enhancements either, so he’s way behind in school.  And now his parents have dragged him to an uninhabited planet where they’re working as terraformers and Tab’s only friends are two synthetic companions. 
Not long after arriving, however, a ship crashes near their homestead and Tab’s parents go missing.  When Tab contacts his home planet, they don’t seem to want to help.  But they do let slip that his synthetic friends may, in fact, be human.

When the attacks begin, Tab must work with his friends to figure out who is trying to kill them and why.  Together they tackle more and more technology as they race from atmospheric scrubbers to buried silo cities in vehicles they never expected to use.  Eventually, Tab undertakes surgeries that integrate technology into his very body and brain.  He thinks that this is the ultimate violation of his faith, but when the planet itself faces destruction he realizes that he must take one final, irrevocable step away from his parents’ ways. 

As the planet comes apart, Tab appears to sacrifice himself when he helps his companions escape in the one remaining ship.  But before they’re even out of the solar system, Tab travels ahead of them by uploading into the dataverse.  His transformation is complete.  Someone wanted him dead, and he’s determined to figure out who, even if it means leaving his body behind.

PROJECT CHRYSALIS The First in a Trilogy - Quinton Skinner 
​
Mykol is a worker in a shop on a mysterious project involving uploading vast amounts of personal data to a huge network after the Grip, a plague that killed ninety percent of humanity twenty-five years before. Jenn is an officer in the Authority, which has taken control of the planet and stockpiled power and technology; she works on another mysterious project utilizing human-controlled robots mining the moon. They meet when Jenn asks Mykol to upload data belonging to her late father, which eventually unravels secrets dating back to the pre-Grip era and the hidden intentions of the mysterious Thomas Gibson, the leader of the Authority.

​After Jenn is expelled from her post and is forced to live outside the Authority walls, she and Mykol fall in love and plot to regain memories of her Authority work that have been removed from her mind, as well as planting the seeds for a new future. After Gibson reveals his true nature, his essence escapes the Earth and he uploads himself into the dataverse and joins others of his kind in the cosmos. 
Book Two The Path Upstairs / Book Three Monarchs Return 

Las Vegas Hat Trick - Liz Schindler 

Las Vegas Hat Trick is a contemporary romantic comedy where Pride & Prejudice meets The Hangover. The manuscript is complete at 89,000 words and envisioned as the first book of a trilogy.
 
NYC it-girl Brette has spent her career advocating for women. She fancies herself a super hero masquerading as a social justice crusader. Resolutely single and pretty sure she has life figured out, Brette runs a magazine famed for its motto, ‘There’s more to life than marriage.’
 
As she’s leaving town to be a part of her friend’s Las Vegas wedding, Brette finds herself reeling when her Gloria Steinem-esque boss, Gwendolyn, reveals she wants a husband – this after decades of publicly protesting the institution of marriage! Gwendolyn’s reasoning – that all the success in the world is meaningless if you get through life without having shared a deep and passionate love – makes Brette suddenly question everything in her own life.
 
Maybe she doesn’t have it all figured out. On the plane to Vegas, a shaken Brette muses that it might be time to mix things up. She wonders whether a fling with her ex-boyfriend (a groomsman in the wedding) might be just the thing to take her mind off Gwendolyn’s traitorous change of heart. Brette becomes so fixated on the reunion with her ex that she doesn’t even see bad boy Reece coming.

​