Coming Soon: Back to the moon...Friday the 13th

I’ve been divorced for almost four years, and have had my original last name back for about 1.5 years now. When I self-published my first short story, The Companion, back in 2013, of course, I didn’t expect that my last name would change. Nor when I self-published Faster After Baby in 2015. Or any of my subsequent work. Of course I didn’t.

And I didn’t do it for the ranking or royalties. Good thing, because my knowing zilch about advertising and marketing, it didn’t get much of either. The silver lining of that, and the decision to self-publish, is this: I can re-release my work wherever I want, and under my original last name. Not a big change, I am simply dropping my former married surname from my pen name. Not something authors would typically choose to do, yet I feel that I must.

Image of the moon that I took in Zanzibar, July 2025

Former pen name: Meredith Oppegard Mikell

New pen name: Meredith Oppegard

The plan: I will re-release each of my short stories here on Substack under my pen name! Free to all. Starting with The Companion (2013), followed by its sequel, The Illuminated (2020), and then Nomadic (2014).

I will release The Companion one chapter at a time, each week, starting Friday, February 13th.

Synopsis:

Satellites and miscellaneous spacecraft abound in 22nd century-Earth's orbit, and an abandoned monitoring outpost on the Moon requires a critical repair. Accustomed to the solitude her profession necessitates, young "exomechanic" Mena is sent to complete the repair, only to have her solitude quickly broken by two unexpected, and unusual, inhabitants of the derelict lunar facility. A brief testament to personal purpose, loss, and the need for human connection, Mena's simple repair job grows to require more than she had anticipated.

I chose Substack as the platform for releasing my work, so SUBSCRIBE HERE!