I had so much fun last year writing my first three Intergalactic Dating Agency novellas that I was happy to tackle the challenge again for 2026. My basic premise is that the IDA might have set up a whole resort planet by the time in the far future where my ongoing Sectors scifi romance stories are placed. It also seemed logical to me that a new race of aliens might have just entered the Sectors as citizens and thought matching with humans would be a quicker way to become fully accepted as members of the civilization. So of course they’d sign a contract with IDA to do matching and dating on a huge scale.
The Ardannans mandate every eligible male between twenty and fifty has to go on one of the five day dates IDA is arranging on their Resort Planet.
This series allows me to be more romance-y in tone than my other series and standalones set in the Sectors. With most books I write I start out knowing the Main Male Character and the Female Main Character and the broad outline of the adventure they’ll be facing and I go from there. I don’t give any particular thought to employing standard tropes of romance. If it happens, it happens but I concentrate on the characters and the situation. With this IDA series I have the world built – the Resort Planet and the Sectors beyond – and I consciously select one trope to anchor the story. Then the events of the MMC and FMC’s five day date come to me as I write.
For Derius, the story is a second chance romance. It was fun to write Leonie, the woman he ghosted three years ago, now matched to him by the IDA algorithm as his perfect match and livid about it. How are these two ever going to get past what happened before and find a future together?
I should mention that each of my Ardannan soldier MMC’s has the ability to shift into an alien lifeform under the right circumstances. Last year’s MMC’s became a dragon, a bear and a tigerlike beast. Derius’s alternate form is pretty extreme – no spoilers! Let’s just say I got to satisfy my love of doing research and wow, there are some fascinating, giant creatures in the depths of the ocean.
Of my other existing series I think the Star Cruises would come the closest in mood and setting, since they take place on a luxury interstellar cruise liner and the crew remains the same but guests come and go. “Love boat of the stars”, anyone? Those are fun to write too!
Here’s the excerpt when Leonie arrives at the resort and discovers who her date is to be:
“Maybe I’ve been stood up,” Derius said more or less to himself as he signaled the waiter for another feelgood. Doesn’t matter, whoever IDA picked for me won’t hold a candle to my mystery woman. She’d been a one night stand by mutual consent, three years ago on a planet whose name he’d forgotten but the memory of the woman stayed warm and alive in his mind and dreams. He’d never forgive himself for the way he left. Not even a note. They hadn’t even exchanged names so he’d had no way to find her after the sudden deployment which had called him away ended so badly and he’d been in the military hospital. I was an idiot, he told himself not for the first or even the hundredth time.
Raising his eyes because the amber depths of his feelgood carried too many painful memories, he surveyed the dance floor, where lucky couples twirled and shimmied. A woman was coming across the crowded floor toward their table, moving with purpose. He blinked, afraid he was having a hallucination or had gotten drunk without realizing it. She was tall, blond, beautiful. She was the woman he’d been fantasizing about for the last three years.
His token beeped and lit up. He saw her check the one in her hand, which was the same.
Afraid to hope, Derius slid off his chair and stepped to meet her. “You!” he breathed in astonishment and joy.
“You!” she said with venom and vitriol as she came to an abrupt stop on the edge of the dance floor. Yanking at her purse strap, then putting her fists on her hips as if ready for combat, her face contorted into a scowl. “Oh no, I am not doing this. There’s been a mistake. I wouldn’t date you if you were the last man alive in the Sectors. Come to the resort planet for five days of fun, they said. Five days of sheer hell is more like it, if I’m forced to be in your company.”
“I don’t blame you for being upset,” he said, moving closer although he was surprised by how agitated she sounded.
“You didn’t even leave me a damn note, not a word. Just fucked me and left.” Her voice was ice and her face was set in unforgiving lines at odds with her lush lips and gorgeous eyes. She backed away as he advanced and he was afraid she was going to flee altogether.
“I got recalled to duty,” he said, resisting the urge to take hold of her wrist to make her stay. She’d probably swing the damn purse at him, as angry as she obviously was.
“In the middle of the night? Do you think I’m an idiot?” She retreated another step as he advanced. “Don’t touch me.” Her voice was pure ice, cutting and cold.
Derius held up his hands and stopped. “I can explain—”
“Said every man who ran out on a woman, ever.” She wasn’t giving an inch.
“Fate’s reuniting us, here of all places,” he said reasonably but inside his chest his heart was pounding as it never did in combat. He couldn’t lose her. There had to be a way to convince her to give him a second chance. “Can’t we at least sit and talk it out?”
She turned on her heel. “I’m going to demand to speak to the Resort Planet manager and end this farce.”
He hurried after her as she cut straight through the dance floor, ignoring the couples she brushed past. “Lady, wait.”
“For you to make a fool of me again?” She shook her head, blond hair swirling. “You do have that old saying on Ardanna too, right? Fool me once, shame on you, fool me twice shame on me.”
VS: Not a promising beginning for them…but it’s a romance so there will be an HEA, I promise.
DERIUS: SOLDIERS OF THE ARDANNAN BOOK FOUR (INTERGALACTIC DATING AGENCY by Veronica Scott
Ordered by his planet’s government to enter this year’s round of dating as arranged by the Intergalactic Dating Agency Derius Tate reported to the resort planet with low expectations. He’d never been able to get over the mystery woman he’d had a passionate one night stand with prior to his last, disastrous deployment as a Special Forces operator. Leonie Bradnum signed up for the five day date trip hoping to get over her feelings once and for all for the handsome soldier who’d seemed like her dream man and then cruelly ghosted her three years ago. The IDA’s infallible algorithm paired her up with…Derius, the very man she’d been pining for and hating equally since the morning she woke up to an empty bed and no way to contact him. Will five days and nights on the luxurious IDA Resort Planet be enough for the two of them to resolve the events of three years ago and find their way back to each other? And when danger strikes can Derius do what has to be done to save Leonie? Fate has given them a second chance.
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