**Winner of the Outstanding Creator Award Fall 2022 for Best Space Opera! 3rd Place for Best Science Fiction and Teen/YA**
I lost my mom eight years ago in the Secession War between Earth and the colonies.
Everyone acts like she's dead, but I know deep down that's not the truth.
That's why I'm joining the Earth Alliance Fleet Academy. To become a command officer, reach the stars, and find the answers.
It doesn't matter if the mention of her name draws angry glares and unfair treatment from Fleet and Academy leaders. I'm not giving up.
My mother is still out there, and I'm going to find her no matter who or what stands in my way.
Failure is not an option.
Sixteen-year-old Zach Aurelian has held the same dream since he was eight years old-to attend the Earth System Alliance Fleet Academy and train to become a command officer like his mother, who went missing in the system-wide civil war that fractured the Alliance. He believes in his soul that she's still alive and is determined to reach the stars to find her, no matter the challenge. Zach soon learns that not only will he face down his anxiety disorder and the rigors of the Academy, but the ghosts of his mother's past who would stand in his way.
A coming of age, space military academy adventure that follows Zach's journey to join the Fleet and find his mother. He'll take on fighter pilot training, navigate friendships and budding romance, and learn what it means to be a true leader and serve in the ESA Fleet.
But the spiteful Commandant Trask has made it his mission to see him wash out of the Academy, and tensions of reignited interstellar war are building. Zach's anxiety disorder and body will be pushed to their limits as he musters the courage to fight through whatever Trask and the Academy throw at him, lean on his friends and allies for support, and step up as a Command Cadet when everything he knows and believes changes.
J.C. Mastro grew up in California in the 1980's. As a child, he enjoyed science fiction and fantasy, spending sunny days outside battling invisible aliens and flying through space in oversized, cardboard ships. Evenings and lazy afternoons were spent consuming 1980's TV and movie favorites like reruns of Star Trek, and Star Wars on worn-down VHS tapes. In his teens, J.C. discovered a love of reading sci-fi and fantasy novels by authors such as Frank Herbert, Michael Crichton, and Timothy Zahn. Nowadays, he's a huge fan of authors like Brandon Sanderson, John Scalzi, and Andy Weir. And just as huge an SF/F movie and TV fan.J.C. is a graduate of the Master of Fine Arts in Writing Popular Fiction program at Seton Hill University and a visually impaired stay-at-home-geek-dad. His short story "Spirit of the Dragon" appears in the Outstanding Creator Award winning anthology, Dragons of a Different Tail, where he also served as an editor. He lives in sunny southern California with a bunch of kids and dogs-and wouldn't want it any other way.Website: www.jcmastroauthor.comInstagram: @jcmastroauthorTwitter: @JCMastroAuthor
