D.W. Jonah

Book One of the Eclipse Cycle

Solara

Above a divided Earth, Terminus-1 was built to keep humanity alive. For Astrid Hawthorn, it is home, school, battlefield, and the one future she lets herself want: Mars. Then the machines begin to wake.

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Chapter One arrives by email. After that: launch news and occasional dispatches from Terminus-1.

The Book
Solara cover
Final revisions · Fall 2026
Book One of the Eclipse Cycle

Solara

Above a divided Earth, Terminus-1 was built to keep humanity alive. For Astrid Hawthorn, it is home, school, battlefield, and the one future she lets herself want: Mars. She is a Nat-born cadet with a famous name and no engineered advantages in a station built around people who do. Around her, America's dominance in space is cracking. Soldiers whisper about plague on Earth below. Machines answer questions no one admits asking. And somewhere inside Terminus-1, a door waits in the dark.

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Last updated: July 2026
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Book Two of the Eclipse Cycle

Luna

Some names are still spoken beneath the stars. The Eclipse Cycle continues.

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Last updated: July 2026
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Read the Transmissions Explore Terminus-1
First Lines

Prologue · Ascension

Ride-Collins, Space Elevator Railcar · The Night Before

The sky burned coral and gold as Earth fell away beneath him.

Aethan drew the vial from his coat pocket with the same care he had once used to check his daughter’s IV line. The orange sunset hit the icy-blue glass and threw back the face he had kept still for ten years.

He turned the vial.

Cela’s tear-streaked face wavered over his own. Her eyes were glazed with death.

The vial trembled in his hand. He steadied it and pressed it to his wrist.

“For you, Cela.” HISS.

Silver climbed his veins. His grip tightened on the vial. The chip at the base of the plunger pressed against the pad of his thumb and warmed. He pulled, controlled. Then harder. Skin came up with it before it let go wet and sudden, leaving the thumb pad white and blistered.

He pocketed the vial.

Meet Astrid in Kensei’s GambitFree short story · 9-minute read · No signup

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Characters

Four people. One collision course.

The Author

D.W. Jonah

How I write, what I'm trying to do, and why the silence between sentences is where the book lives.

I write cinematic space opera that trusts its readers — the kind of book that assumes you'll catch what's left unsaid.

I grew up on the long game: Robert Jordan and Robin Hobb taught me that patience is its own kind of plot, S.A. Corey showed me how to run a whole crew at once, and a steady diet of Salvatore, Zahn, and late nights with Babylon 5 gave me a permanent weakness for a wounded swordsman and a war that turns on one quiet conversation. Solara is what came out: the first novel of the Eclipse Cycle, a slow-burn collision course of cadets, diplomats, the finest biohuman fighter alive, and a quiet man with too much time on his hands.

I'm a Christian, husband, father of six, and lover of hiking, tennis, and great books. I live and write in the American South.

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