"I won the alien lottery, Priscilla!" Mercy told me, the excitement clear. "Ten days at Beginnings." She grinned. "For two. Be my plus one." Adventures of a livetime have started with less announcement than that, but not very often. Lottery is the first in a set of stories set at Beginnings, the alien resort from the Selected series. These stories can be read in any order after one has read the Selected series through Beginnings. Lottery is 90,000 words. The stories are meant to be shorter and simpler than the novels from the Selected series. In this story, we'll spend a little time with some of the familiar species from Selected while getting to better know a few others.

Libra Church receives an unexpected phone call from a woman with an accented voice. Libra had registered for the waiting list at Beginnings, and the Catseye was calling her to make a rather unusual offer. Would she care to visit Beginnings if she were to share a room with several other human women? Of course she would. Libra and her new friends arrive at Beginnings and share a variety of adventures. Along the way, they meet many of our old friends and a few new ones. This is a novel of 75,000 words.