Dustbound

Jace Wilder lives in the bones of a world that most left behind. Gatlinburg, Tennessee-once a tourist trap in the mountains-is now a stubborn outpost of rust, memory, and moonshine. Alongside his childhood friend Cade Sutton, Jace scrapes by salvaging space junk in a patched-up shuttle, hunting for parts the Martian markets missed. It's not glamorous, but it's home.
When an abandoned ship streaks past them in orbit-sleek, ancient, and completely out of place-their quiet life fractures. There's no crew, no records, and no reason it should exist. As Jace digs deeper, trying to keep his struggling business afloat and his small crew paid, he finds signs of something bigger: black market tech, rival scrappers getting bolder, and a mysterious energy signature near Mars that no one wants to talk about.
Now the question isn't whether they can sell the ship.
It's whether they were meant to find it at all.
A space-western drenched in nostalgia, grit, and neon moonlight, Old Earth Hustle is a story about loyalty, survival, and the things we leave behind-even when we never meant to.

*Currently a work in progress. Title and Cover are temporary, all text subject to change*