Short Fiction Posted

I've posted all of my short fiction from the Starbreaker saga, spanning 2012-2018.

Steadfast

The people of a newly resettled town have stumbled upon one of the old empire's darker secrets, left festering since Nationfall. Now its guardian is out for blood, steadfastly determined to carry out his final orders, and Naomi Bradleigh must stop him.

(I eventually expanded this novelette into a web serial and novel called Silent Clarion.)

The Milgram Battery

Before Morgan can take his oath and serve as an Adversary sworn to prosecute tyranny, corruption, and exploitation he must face a final ordeal sequenced from his own nightmares and the obedience experiments of Stanley Milgram. "The Milgram Battery" was originally published in the Curiosity Quills: Primetime anthology.

Tattoo Vampire

I think I wrote this before "Steadfast", and it ties into that novelette since it involves another survivor of "Project Harker", a series of unethical experiments on by the North American Commonwealth military's Advanced Research Projects Agency on CPMD+ soldiers at Fort Clarion just before Nationfall. Yes, I stole the title from a Blue Öyster Cult song.

The Holiday Rush

Curiosity Quills Press wanted a short story for their website to help promote the Starbreaker saga, something that showed my characters being heroic. I basically wrote this for exposure, like a schmuck. Don't expect much; I might have revised this once before publication. It originally appeared on their website as "Of Cats and Cardigans".

Limited Liability

Michael Chapman is about to launch the biggest venture of his life. Whether he succeeds or fails, the consequences will be earth-shattering, but there's one person would rather not see the earth shattered… "Limited Liability" originally appeared in Curiosity Quills: Chronology.

Thirteen Cuts

A guilt-ridden young man seeks absolution from a therapist who wouldn't grant it even if he were qualified to do so. The only hope for atonement is a return to the scene of the crime.

Going Pseudonymous

I've been thinking this over for a long time, and I've decided that I no longer wish to publish my stories under my "real name". Instead, I'll be using a pseudonym: "Cat Loveless". I want to promote more distance between my writing and my day job, something I should have done from the beginning.

Starbreaker (200x): a trunk novel

I just finished converting and uploading my 2009 trunk novel, Starbreaker. I had originally planned to put it on my personal website, but decided that since I'm using PHPetite it might be better to make the novel its own "site" and share it on starbreaker.org.

If you'd rather read this in your feed reader, here's the Atom feed.

Hello World

Hello. I’m Cat Loveless, and this is the site I’ve built to share my Starbreaker stories online.

Starbreaker is a project I’ve been working on since 1996. It got the name from the song by Judas Priest, but has nothing to do with the DC villain. I’m sorry if this confuses anybody.

Starbreaker started out as a pastiche of games and anime from the 1990s such as Final Fantasy, Phantasy Star, Metal Gear Solid, SaGa Frontier, Vagrant Story, Xenogears, Megami Tensei, Vampire Hunter D, Akira, Demon City Shinjuku, X/1999, and Ghost in the Shell mixed in with imagery drawn from heavy metal and progressive rock lyrics and fiction by Michael Moorcock, Roger Zelazny, and C. L. Moore (among many others). Over the years I’ve refined it into something more completely my own.

The core musical influences include…

• Judas Priest
• The Sisters of Mercy
• Queensrÿche
• Iron Maiden
• The Cure
• Nightwish
• Braindance
• Therion
• Type O Negative
• Blue Öyster Cult

You might have heard of it. It’s actually still a godawful pastiche and mainly resembles Elric on a Harley, but whatever. LOL

In the 2010s I managed to publish two novels and several short stories with a now-defunct outfit called Curiosity Quills Press. Now that the publication rights for the most recent works have reverted to me, I’ve decided to do what I wanted to do back in 2000 and start publishing Starbreaker as web fiction on this site.

Stories

These are the Starbreaker stories Cat Loveless has written and published over the years, mainly with the now-defunct Curiosity Quills Press.

They are currently stalled on When You Don't See Me due to emotional difficulties caused by family troubles and the general difficulty of life during a pandemic.

Since the rights to the most recent materials reverted to them at the end of 2020, they're putting everything online.

Privacy

This website respects your privacy because the author values their own.

No Ads

Because ads suck, the author has a day job, and would rather not be part of the problem.

Analytics by Plausible

This site uses lightweight, privacy-respecting analytics by Plausible, mainly to satisfy their own curiosity as to where visitors come from. Plausible doesn't collect personally identifying information, but it does use a little JavaScript. You can see their stats if you like, and have a good laugh at how little traffic they get.

Support

If you enjoy what they post here, please let them know. Their day job pays the bills, but it doesn't feed the soul.

Thanks for visiting.

Contact

If you need to contact the author, here's how to go about it:

• email them
• tag them on Mastodon
• add them on SpaceHey
• find them on Codeberg

They like hearing from their fans, though they have difficulty believing they have any.

Colophon

This website is built using a custom version of Bradley Taunt's PHPetite.

It's hosted by Dreamhost in the United States.

It uses analytics by plausible.io. Please see the privacy page for details.

The content is © 1996-2021 Cat Loveless, and is available for personal and non-commercial use under a Creative Commons BY-NC-SA 4.0 license.

Bio

Cat Loveless is a pseudonym for a husband-and-wife creative team located in the eastern US: Matthew Graybosch and Catherine Gatt. The Starbreaker saga is what brought them together over twenty years ago; Matthew does most of the writing, and Catherine helps with editing and development.

About

Starbreaker is a collection of science fantasy pastiches by Cat Loveless that they write mainly on their lunch breaks at work. It's also an homage to their favorite heavy metal bands, speculative fiction authors, video games, and anime. They call their work pastiche instead of fanfic because they don't use existing characters or settings.