The Ambassador

The Ambassador

by Terri Morgan

Ambassador Micha Lawrence would like to retire. She can’t. The Central Alliance High Council has called her for a secret and dangerous mission. She must go to distant Ka’len, meet the Kora, get a treaty with them, and stop the invading Olmeri before they get a foothold in the system. She gets a new ship and to her surprise, a new Captain.

The Ambassador begins a series of eight books that follow the journey of Ambassador Micha Lawrence. They offer a rare glimpse into the inner world of traditional martial arts training. They focus on the good guys, their training, and their character. They are human stories about how we learn, grow, develop our skills, and then pass on what we have learned to the next generations. The stories begin in her present where we meet her universe and her friends. Then, they go back 30 years into her past – to the time she first arrived on Ras 2 to begin her training and met her life-long friends, Sentar, Maru, Galen, and B’ani. Returning to the present, the stories move forward into the future as the Ambassador and her friends prepare the next generation to take the lead.

The Ambassador is low-concept, realistic, and tightly grounded

It’s a comfortable adventure in a world where excellence is expected, integrity and honor matter, trust is earned, wits matter more than firepower, friends are the best, everybody gets a seat at the table, and the good guys win most of the time. It crosses generations and cultures, East and West. It’s new and fresh and old and full of all sorts of hooks and turns. Always another secret to be revealed. It’s not the same and it is exactly the same. It will make you smile, cry a little, and smile again. It’s normal, mostly.

The characters are humble, honest, polite, and the best of the best

Ambassador Micha Lawrence is an accomplished older woman. She is an ambassador, a martial artist, a diplomat and a civilian, not another Captain or renegade. She well-liked, well-respected, and extremely good at what she does. She’s not a broken relic looking for redemption. She speaks multiple languages, hosts exceptional dinners, and works very hard to make whatever she does look easy. She’s still got game but she’s not a ‘young vixen’ any more. She brings together a team that includes multiple generations and races. Together, they look for ways to protect the Local Neighborhood and stop the invading Olmeri.

We’ve seen what happens many times before

Five concepts set the foundations for the story: 1) Working together. 2) Looking for/seeking. 3) Protecting. 4) Local Neighborhood. 5) Stopping the invaders. The parallels in the real world are plentiful. Consider all the times throughout history when some local folks (community, town, village) came together to try to find a way to protect their neighborhoods (their homes, their lands) from destruction by invaders (corporate raiders, warlords, real-life invaders).

The heart of the story is friendship, family, and hope.

It’s about the friends we wish we had who we can always count on to show up when we need them. It’s about how we bring up the next generations and pass on what we’ve learned. It’s about setting a bigger table and bringing people together. It’s optimistic. Underneath every challenge is the idea that by working together we can figure it out even if we don’t have a solution right now.

It’s about the heroes we’d all like to be.

The lead characters are all from different worlds. Some are different races. Yet they are mostly the same. ‘We’re all out here, different and together’ is one of the key themes. They don’t save the universe. They try to do good. Sometimes they succeed. Sometimes they fail. They are brilliant and humble, honest and kind. They are excellent at what they do. They are mostly regular, normal, outwardly average, incredibly interesting, quietly extraordinary people.

The stories offer a rare glimpse into the inner world of traditional martial arts training.

They focus on the good guys, their training, and their character. They are human stories about how we learn, grow, develop our skills, and then pass on what we have learned to the next generations.

The stories are written for adults at a high-school reading level. Using movie ratings, they would be G/PG-rated. Themes include philosophical questions – is this the right thing to do? how do we gain trust? what is ‘good’ character? There are nuances (no profanity) in the ways the characters talk with each other that younger children would not understand without explanations. Curious teens and young adults will like the stories quite a lot.

Throughout the stories, the key idea is that what may seem too difficult isn’t, not when we have good friends. The focus is on taking care of each other, what honor, integrity, honesty, and kindness mean, how we pass on what we have learned and bring up the next generations, and all sorts of positive character questions that are fundamental to the traditional martial arts.

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The Ambassador
Paperback (330 pp)
ISBN-13  978-0-9672889-7-0
Retail: US$12.99

The Ambassador
Kindle/Digital Online (1.5 MB)
ISBN-13  978-0-9672889-6-3
Retail: US$8.99