SCIENCE-FICTION NOVELLeap Between StarsKindle Paperback Christmas reading · 2026
Stories to share.
Worlds to wander.
Old wisdom in unfamiliar futures, little animal adventures to enjoy together, and a forest full of secrets. Christmas reading from Rebecca Vardy and N.J. Fernbird.
Explore our Christmas bookshelf
N.J. FERNBIRD · SHARED READING
A Little Place to Belong
Six books about kindness, friendship, and finding room for everyone.
REBECCA VARDY · ADULT SCIENCE FICTION
Old Words, New Worlds
Five short-story collections carry familiar sayings into futures where every choice has consequences.
N.J. FERNBIRD · TEEN & ADULT FANTASY
The Emberwood Chronicles
Four connected adventures. A city above, a forest below, and a truth waiting between them.
Two authors · two imagined worlds · one shared website
Where futures and legends meet.
Rebecca Vardy writes adult science fiction about memory, survival, and old wisdom. N.J. Fernbird creates New Zealand-inspired fantasy for teen readers, with enough pace, danger, and heart to keep older adventurers turning the pages.
REBECCA VARDY / ADULT SCIENCE FICTION
N.J. FERNBIRD / TEEN FANTASY WITH CROSS-GENERATIONAL APPEAL
SCROLL TO DISCOVER
Adult science fiction.
Fantasy with its boots on.
Adventure has no age limit.
Choose your doorway
Two authors.
Two kinds of wonder.
Rebecca Vardy and N.J. Fernbird are distinct authors working alongside one another. Each opens a different door: one into difficult futures, the other into dangerous, hopeful fantasy.
01 / ADULT SCIENCE FICTION
Rebecca Vardy
Stories of memory, survival, first contact, old wisdom, and the difficult business of remaining human when the universe has other ideas.
Enter the future 02 / FANTASYN.J. Fernbird
Published fantasy for teen readers, written with enough danger, humour, courage, and emotional weight for adventurous older adults too—with a new four-book series releasing in November 2026.
Cross into fantasyRebecca Vardy · adult science fiction
Seventeen doorways
into the future.
Science fiction for adult readers, rooted in old wisdom, New Zealand landscapes, and the stubbornly human questions that follow us anywhere.
STANDALONE WORLDS
Novels beyond the series
Journeys through distance, memory, inheritance, and the worlds we carry with us.
FIVE-VOLUME COLLECTION
Whakataukī Among the Stars
Short science-fiction stories guided by Māori proverbs, carrying old wisdom into unfamiliar skies.
THE SAYING COLLECTION
Old Words of New Worlds
Familiar sayings become uncertain maps when language, consequence, and human nature leave Earth behind.
FIVE-BOOK COLLECTION
Whakataukī Beyond the Black
Māori wisdom carried deeper into the dark, where first contact, memory, and survival complicate every lesson.
WHAKATAUKĪ BEYOND THE BLACKCustoms, Protocols and Other DisastersKindle Paperback 
WHAKATAUKĪ BEYOND THE BLACKDarkness, With FootnotesKindle Paperback 
WHAKATAUKĪ BEYOND THE BLACKSomebody Moved the AncestorsKindle Paperback 
WHAKATAUKĪ BEYOND THE BLACKThe Stars Were Here FirstKindle Paperback 
WHAKATAUKĪ BEYOND THE BLACKUnder Strange SunsKindle Paperback 
N.J. Fernbird · fantasy
Magic with mud on its boots.
N.J. Fernbird writes New Zealand-inspired fantasy for teen readers without ever talking down to them. These are stories with movement in their legs: danger, humour, loyalty, courage, consequences, and the sense that wonder is always one step beyond the safe path.
The voice is young, but the invitation is wide. Older adults who still want mystery, momentum, and characters worth worrying about are very welcome here.
TWO BOOKS PUBLISHED · FOUR MORE ON THE WAY
The Rainstitched Path and The Rejoining Threads are available now. The four-book Emberwood Chronicles will arrive on four consecutive Tuesdays from 3 to 24 November 2026.
AVAILABLE NOW
Two paths already open.
Published fantasy novels by N.J. Fernbird, ready to find through her Amazon Australia author store.
KINDLE PREORDERS OPEN
The Emberwood Chronicles.
Four connected novels of a falling city, broken roots, remembered places, and young people asked to carry more than anyone expected—releasing on four consecutive Tuesdays in November 2026.EMBERWOOD CHRONICLES · BOOK ONEThe Call
A floating city built on forgotten truths. A forest that refuses to forget.
About this book
Fourteen-year-old Kahu Raukura has spent his life beneath Aorere, the magnificent city floating above Waimako Bend. The city is orderly, powerful and very certain about its own history. Then the Emberwood calls Kahu by name.
Drawn beyond the safe paths, Kahu discovers living roots, impossible guardians and traces of family memories that should never have been erased. With sharp-eyed Rina, practical Tama and one stubborn little bird beside him, he must face the Office—the authority that controls Aorere’s records and has no intention of allowing the past to wake.
Every answer leads deeper into the forest. Every step brings the floating city closer to a truth buried beneath its foundations.
The first book in The Emberwood Chronicles, a New Zealand-inspired teen fantasy adventure about courage, belonging and the dangerous comfort of a well-kept lie.
EMBERWOOD CHRONICLES · BOOK TWOThe Falling City
A floating city was never meant to touch the earth. Aorere is falling.
About this book
One living root now binds Aorere to the hillside, and the city above Waimako Bend hangs lower than ever. Cracks spread through its streets. Old smoke rises from places the Office sealed away. In Kahu’s hand, the emberstone shard has begun to wake again.
While officials argue over how to preserve the city, Kahu, Rina and Tama follow signs that point both skyward and below. Their search uncovers a damaged guardian, a dangerous splinter and the memory of a woman Aorere’s records insist never lived.
The truth could save the city—but only if Kahu can reach it before fear persuades the Office to sever Aorere’s last connection to the ground.
The second book in a continuous New Zealand-inspired teen fantasy series filled with living roots, forgotten histories, watchful birds and the occasional clipboard used with alarming confidence.
EMBERWOOD CHRONICLES · BOOK THREEThe Sky Beneath the Soil
Beneath the forest lies a sky that should not exist.
About this book
Aorere is wounded, the emberstone shard is awake, and a deep humming has begun beneath Nan’s house. The sound is more than a warning. It is an invitation from a place erased so thoroughly that even the city above has forgotten its name.
Kahu, Rina and Tama descend into a world of backward rivers, stones that remember weight and stars shining beneath the ground. As guardians gather and lost things begin to return, Aorere’s own records start recovering the truths the Office buried.
But memory is not harmless. Aorere is beginning to remember, and the forgotten forest holds an answer capable of changing both the city and the Emberwood forever.
The third book in a continuous New Zealand-inspired teen fantasy series about friendship, family memory and finding the courage to hear an inconvenient truth.
EMBERWOOD CHRONICLES · BOOK FOURThe Echo Lantern
The city has begun to remember. Now every stolen name wants to come home.
About this book
The guardians have returned to their paths, but the Emberwood is still calling Kahu. Beneath Nan’s house, a hidden name knocks from the dark. Above Waimako Bend, Aorere hangs low between living roots while its records struggle to restore the history the Office erased.
The final clues lead Kahu, Rina and Tama to the Echo Lantern, a light capable of revealing memories divided, altered and taken away. To heal the city, they must uncover what happened to Mae, Ari and the Raukura family—and bring the truth into the open where it can no longer be quietly corrected.
Some memories return as gifts. Others return carrying a reckoning.
The concluding book in The Emberwood Chronicles, a New Zealand-inspired teen fantasy adventure about homecoming, responsibility and the courage required to remember the whole truth.
From N.J. Fernbird’s side of the path
Notes from the edge of the forest.
Three glimpses into the landscapes, old wisdom, living memories, and small sparks from which N.J. Fernbird’s fantasy worlds grow.
WELCOME TO THE REALMS
Beyond the ordinary road
Fantasy is another way of exploring reality.
There is something irresistible about stepping beyond the familiar into a place where forests remember old promises, mountains guard secrets, and rivers may know more about a traveller than the traveller knows about themselves. My realms may contain hidden doorways, forgotten cities, strange creatures and paths that appear only when the mist settles, but their hearts remain close to home. Courage, doubt, friendship, loss and hope live inside the choices each character must make: whether to trust a stranger, protect a fragile truth, challenge an ancient rule or keep walking after the road has vanished. Fantasy gives difficult questions room to breathe. A young hero can discover that courage is not the absence of fear; a forgotten guardian can learn that being remembered is not the same as being understood. The map may be unreliable and something in the bushes may already be watching, but every worthwhile adventure begins by leaving the ordinary road behind.
— N.J. Fernbird
AOTEAROA & IMAGINATION
Stories rooted in place
The landscape is never merely a background.
My fantasy is shaped by Aotearoa: its ancient forests, restless mountains, windswept riverbanks, quiet communities and abandoned streets where memory still lingers. These places do not need to be transformed beyond recognition before they can inspire wonder. Mist gathers in the bush as though the trees are keeping secrets. A fallen trunk resembles a doorway. A bird calling from deep beneath the canopy sounds less like wildlife and more like a warning. In my stories, land shapes the people who live upon it. Rivers divide communities or draw them together; forests shelter, challenge and remember. When Māori words, concepts or whakataukī appear, I want them to carry meaning rather than serve as decoration—grounded in relationships, responsibility, memory and belonging. Fantasy lets me ask what happens when people stop listening to the land, when old promises are forgotten, or when a damaged connection with place must be found again. The magic is imagined, but the questions are deeply human.
— N.J. Fernbird
FROM THE WRITING PATH
Cultivating stories
Stories send out roots before they reveal what they are becoming.
A fantasy realm may begin with something very small: a seed, a whispered name, an old map, a curious child, an unusual bird or a doorway that should not be there. Its deeper roots may lie in landscape, family history, lived experience and stories carried across generations. That is the quiet power of fantasy. It creates a meeting place between what has been, what might have been and what may still be waiting beyond the edge of sight. Young readers may recognise themselves in a character searching for courage or belonging; older readers may hear echoes of choices, losses and lessons gathered across a lifetime. On the Fernbird Fantasy blog, I share the paths leading into my books—characters, creatures, enchanted places, New Zealand inspirations, excerpts, writing updates and the occasional idea that escaped from the manuscript before I could stop it. The forest may be listening and the map may have ideas of its own, but something within the journey may still feel like home.
— N.J. Fernbird
“Because we can’t name what we haven’t loved.”— Rebecca Vardy, Leap Between Stars
From Rebecca Vardy’s side of the desk
Field notes from the writing desk.
For now, Rebecca is talking about stories, second beginnings, old sayings, and the wonderfully untidy work of building new worlds.
THE WRITING LIFE
Beginning again—in my sixties
When the job ends, the story begins.
I began writing seriously when my job ended while I was in my sixties. The practical side was secure, but the sudden empty days were not the soft golden gift people imagine. Work had given life its shape; without it, time sat across the kitchen table and asked, ‘Well? What now?’ So I began to write. What started as a way to fill the blank spaces quietly became a calling—a new rhythm, and somewhere to put a lifetime of family stories, losses, awkward conversations, hard-won humour, and every cup of coffee made in a crisis. Beginning later is not a disadvantage. You do not come to the page empty-handed. There is no age limit on imagination and no expiry date on the soul. One chapter ended, a slightly creaky door opened, and behind it were stories. I had time. That is a dangerous combination—in the best possible way.
— Rebecca
BEHIND THE WORLDS
Where the future really begins
Where the Stories Walk In
Ideas rarely arrive politely. They creep in while I am making coffee, washing dishes, trying to sleep—and especially while I am walking. Some of my strongest have come from the Christchurch red zone, where streets remain but homes are gone and the silence feels like a held breath. It is a broken landscape, but not a dead one. Grass pushes through cracks, birds move through the quiet, and nature clears its throat as if to say, ‘Right, you’ve had your turn.’ That tension—loss and renewal standing in the same frame—is often the first spark. A cracked road becomes a colony built on unstable ground. An empty section suggests a planet where the houses have moved but the ghosts have not updated their addresses. Science fiction lets me move deeply human truths sideways: grief becomes a planet that mourns, displacement a colony built over bones, renewal moss crossing the hull of a dead generation ship. A whakataukī gives me the heartbeat, the walk gives me the bones, and then the story puts on its own peculiar hat and begins causing trouble. That is where I find ideas: in the cracks, the silence, and the places where something has ended but the story, inconveniently and beautifully, has not.
— Rebecca
PROVERBS IN ORBIT
When old wisdom leaves Earth
Short Stories: Where They All Came From
Short stories are sneaky little things. They appear in notebooks, computer folders, half-named documents and, rather inconveniently, while I am making tea. Mine did not merely multiply; they formed a colony. I have now written fifteen short-story books, each holding sixteen stories—240 gathered into collections, with others still wandering about like sheep that have found a gap in the fence. Since I began writing proverb stories, they have grown in a different way. A whakataukī catches my eye, my heart, or that awkward part of my imagination that likes trouble, and suddenly there is a spaceship, a strange planet, a guardian, a broken rule, or someone facing a choice they never expected to make. Some stories find their place in books. Others suit the blog: the shorter pieces, the odd experiments, and those that arrived wearing mismatched socks but still had something to say. Even the abandoned ones matter. Not every seed becomes a tree; some feed the soil and teach you what not to plant again. These stories have taught me that small does not mean slight. A few pages can hold courage, grief, memory, humour, warning, kindness and wonder. So the cupboard is not bare. It is overstocked, muttering, and possibly breeding in the dark—a universe being built one short story at a time, with another cheeky little thing already tapping at the window.
— Rebecca
Keep in touch
Follow the signal.
Find the path.
News from Rebecca Vardy’s future worlds and N.J. Fernbird’s fantasy realms, gathered together in one place.
01AMAZON AUSTRALIABooks by Rebecca VardyFind Rebecca’s published science fiction, book details, and the latest available editions.02AMAZON AUSTRALIABooks by N.J. FernbirdFind The Rainstitched Path, The Rejoining Threads, and future fantasy releases from N.J. Fernbird.03BLOGRebecca Among the StarsLonger thoughts on science fiction, the writing life, and the ideas behind the worlds.04N.J. FERNBIRD · BLOGFernbird FantasyFantasy, folklore, the writing life, and the worlds taking shape behind N.J. Fernbird’s books.05REBECCA VARDY · FACEBOOKRebecca Vardy NZ AuthorFollow Rebecca’s book news, science-fiction releases, videos, and work taking shape behind the scenes.06FACEBOOK · SHARED BOOK NEWSWhakahoki PressBook news and release updates from Rebecca Vardy and N.J. Fernbird.07REBECCA VARDY · FACEBOOKOld Wisdom, New Worlds: A New Look at ProverbsA companion page celebrating Rebecca’s love of proverbs and the new worlds old wisdom can inspire.08N.J. FERNBIRD · FACEBOOKBeyond the Last PageExploring infinite worlds, one quote at a time—a companion page for N.J. Fernbird’s fantasy.