CHARLOTTE FRANCIS
Exploring the human condition through Sci-Fi and Fantasy
CHARLOTTE FRANCIS
Exploring the human condition through Sci-Fi and Fantasy
My Story
Having written compulsively my whole life, I finally started writing novels when I left my job as a teacher to care for my disabled son. In the past seven years, I’ve written seven novels, spanning Space Opera, Dystopian Science-Fantasy, Epic Fantasy, and Romantic Fantasy.
I believe there’s no better avenue for exploring what it means to be human than in worlds where humanity isn’t a given and anything can—and does—happen to test characters in ways that just aren’t possible in non-speculative fiction.
I’m currently on submission with my sixth book, The Last Sky, a sci-fi exploration of grief and alcoholism, which I wrote following the death of my mother. It’s my Ode to Grief (and nowhere near as heavy as it sounds).
I also go by the name Charlotte Harris.
My Books
The Last Sky. Sci-Fi. On Submission.
Redemption was never meant to be easy.
Twelve years ago, Isaac Rhodes avenged his son’s death by killing the ‘gods’, enabling the oppressive Authority to seize control. Now, he numbs his grief with alcohol, hiding from their relentless AI enforcers. But his solitary life shatters when he impulsively rescues Skye, a mute nine-year-old girl with an inhuman aptitude for learning.
When elite operatives hunt her down, Isaac is plunged into a galaxy-spanning struggle against the Authority, burdened with a new co-pilot who attracts nothing but trouble. After an accidental reunion with his ex-wife and former crew leads to the destruction of their ship, they coerce Isaac into completing their dissident mission. Only one catch: their plan to infiltrate the Authority’s AI network feels a lot like suicide.
Isaac’s hands are full, juggling his spiralling alcoholism, a crew who loathe him, and a deep need to atone for his past, while everyone in the galaxy seems to be shooting at him. Then there’s Skye, whose transformation blurs the line between human and AI. Her emerging god-like powers have the potential to turn her into the Authority’s ultimate weapon. Protecting her offers Isaac one last shot at redemption—and, just maybe, a chance to be a father again.
The Skin Between Us. Romantic Fantasy. Editing.
If you can control someone’s mind with a simple touch, how can they ever love you?
In famine-stricken Xaroth, Essian hides her forbidden mind-control magic behind silk gloves and clever cons, until a heist goes wrong, and she’s caught by the second most powerful man in the city-state. The imperator offers her a choice: impersonate a noble-born woman, infiltrate the ruling court, seduce the city’s unstable ruler and manipulate him into declaring war—or die.
But as Ess enters the court, she becomes entangled in deadly politics, infuriating rivalries, and debauched double standards that flout the city’s strict rules on touch and skin. As she tightens her grip on power, Ess finds herself in the sights of the ruler’s dangerously perceptive son, Caladon, a brooding war hero who makes it his mission to uncover her true identity. One slip up, and he could have her executed, and yet she can’t stop herself drawing closer to him, fascinated by his sharp mind, his quiet trauma, the unexpected tenderness of a man determined to destroy her.
As her lies pile up and her manipulations strain the ruler’s mind to the point of madness, Ess must choose: become a monster by plunging the city-state into war and survive, or reveal herself and accept death as the price of her conscience. After all, is life worth living if she will always be alone? If she can enslave someone’s mind with a touch, can love ever be real?
We Always Come Back. Sci-Fi. Drafting.
Some families fall apart. Others fall back together.
The Boone family motto was “we always come back”, until tragedy proved them wrong and scattered them across the galaxy. Now, with their notorious vigilante parents missing, four estranged siblings must find their way back to each other: the charming disaster with a trail of abandoned children; the commitment-phobe who accidentally soul-bonded an alien for life; the hypochondriac afraid of everything except what’s actually killing him...
And Meya, the youngest, the responsible one, the one who escaped. She traded Wild Space for a military career, picked a boyfriend so safe he never once got her shot at, and hasn’t spoken to her family in years. She says she’s done.
The voice in her head says she’s lying.
That lie is put to the test when her childhood crew of misfits and legends crashes into her carefully controlled life. Her parents have vanished, and the crew need Meya’s help to bring them home.
So, Meya’s heading back into Wild Space to round up her dysfunctional siblings and survive their company long enough to find their parents, who are definitely in over their heads. Whatever they were hunting is tied to the network that makes interstellar travel possible. If the Boones can’t make good on the family motto and come together, travel between worlds will collapse—and no one will come back ever again.
Dark. Sci-Fi Thriller. Drafting.
If you strip the identity from a person, memory by memory, until nothing of their past self remains, are they still guilty of their crimes?
A crew wakes on a crippled starship with no memories, a dead captain, and the chilling certainty that one of them is a murderer—even if none of them can remember the crime. As their damaged ship tumbles toward disaster, the survivors scramble to save themselves, only to discover they’re carrying a cargo more dangerous than they could have imagined.
But truth aboard the Theseus is never simple. When the culprit is finally unmasked, it’s only the first link in a chain of revelations that recasts their orders, their loyalties, and their future. With the past erased, survival may depend not on who they were, but on who they choose to become.
Fractured. Science-Fantasy. Editing
Reality has broken. Only they can fix it.
Star-crossed lovers.
A disgraced hero.
A grieving mother.
And an insecure scholar-prince.
Five fragmented lives.
One mission: Traverse the broken reality of the Fracture to find the means to undo the damage, and save their world.
One catch: The only thing more broken than reality is humanity itself. A brutal war pits them against each other. Can they survive one another long enough to save the world?
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