Laurie Morgan, reluctant supreme commander

Supreme Commander Laurie Morgan’s estranged husband Rod becomes enchanted with a former enemy Counselor, the sexy Bloasphr, an identical copy of Laurie herself at age eighteen. He and the alien inexplicably forge a Charisma Union enabling Rod to deliver a passionate United System Council speech which so captivates the assembly that it votes to make him supreme ruler of the System.

Laurie flees to planet Marox sixteen light-years away, where she accepts the inhabitants’ offer to command their revolutionary Maroxin Surge Force.

I’m on Draft Two of Exile and Renaissance, the third book in the Supreme Commander Laurie series.

Rod Morgan, newly minted man on horseback

Who Wrote This? Versus: One Hopes One Is Not Kidding Oneself

Bloasphr, alien protoplasm configured to Laurie parameters

Draft 1 blocked out scenes in theater rehearsal mode as I threw in all manner of stuff to see would happen. To my surprise, Bloasphr oddly became a main character, and after despairing of my initial set of vague ending ideas, I found I could morph the last chapters into a concrete conclusion.

But when I finished the rough draft in August, I had that familiar but puzzling writer amnesia about how the first parts of the book went. I worried that the initial chapters were just mediocre warm-up, but as I started rereading I was surprised at how well they worked and how well the first draft hung together. Still boggled by the concept of “Who the hell wrote all this?” I found that many problems I’d anticipated when I finished Draft 1 had already been seamlessly dealt with. A linear story kept unfolding. Overall, though Exile and Renaissance needs clean-up and rethinking in places, it works as it is, rare for a first draft. Of the twenty-plus novels I’ve written, I’ve only had this experience three or four times. Usually my first draft is a real structural problem.

Yes, one certainly hopes one is not kidding oneself, but I figure I’ll encounter the truth of that soon enough.

But to do Exile and Renaissance justice, I want to make sure that its final result is high energy. I need to brainstorm on various incongruencies and exposition issues I may be overlooking. I also want to be thinking of a truly stunning cover and to continue getting a deep grasp of this novel. It’s raised many issues I wasn’t aware needed raising.

Synopses, Web Pages, Overviews and Focus

Admiral Mavis Wheeler, Laurie’s often uncertain sidekick

I’ve made full synopses and shorter ones, as well as shorter blurbs. These and my two-page, chapter-by-chapter overview notes, along with the book’s first web page, have really helped bring the story arc into focus. I also reread the previous novel in the series, The Benign Incursion, for continuity issues and perspective. In addition, I usually ground myself in a novel by drawing its characters, something realistically, sometimes abstractly. A good cover will further anchor the book.

A final disclaimer for this AI age: despite all the talk of AI’s “creative tools” I still refuse to believe they’re any substitute for human psychic integration, and I refuse to deal with AI–unless you want to argue that spell-check is primitive AI.  I’ve begun including on novel title page versos:

No part of this novel was created with artificial intelligence. No part of this novel may be copied or used for artificial intelligence or large language model purposes.

copyright 2026 by Michael D. Smith

The Supreme Commander Laurie Series:

Book 1. Supreme Commander Laurie
Inexplicably transported onto Jack Commer’s doomed spaceship, Laurie struggles to assert herself as the new supreme commander.

Book 2. The Benign Incursion
Laurie’s endless legal and administrative headaches pale in comparison to her scandalous attraction to the young physician/engineer Rod Morgan on spaceship Pegasus I.

Book 3. Exile and Renaissance