Welcome to the April Fools for Love blog hop, sponsored by the SFR Station. In trying to come up for a post for the event, I thought about some of the foolish things my characters have done for the one they love. For instance: In Tethered, my succubus-like heroine Tyree went against the strict, inflexible coda of her entire species by falling in love with a mere human. In return he risked war with a race determined and capable of wiping out everyone else.
In Keir, my tortured, tattooed hero fell over begging the heroine to stop crying. She offered him a place to call home despite the danger he posed and the advice of her friends against it.
In Imprint, alien lawman Tevik places his whole existence into the hands of Jiona, the thief he'd pursued and finally captured, in order to win her trust and her love. And you can read more of that story for free!
Please note: Gift cards are for the choice of iBooks,
Nook, All Romance or Amazon KINDLE (not a general Amazon card)
To enter for the grand prize, please fill in the rafflecopter giveaway below. You can only enter once for the blog hop (ie you can't enter it for each blog you visit), but there is an option to tweet the contest each day.
I've donated an ebook of my scifi romance adventure Tethered and a rare eARC of my upcoming re-release - time travel romance Keir - to the grand prize book bundle. But leave me some comment love here and I'll pick three random winners to receive my hot scifi romance short Terms & Conditions Apply in whatever digital format the winner requires. Please be sure to leave me your email addy in order to take part in the giveaway, and tell me what's your all-time favourite scifi film/show/book. Now hop along to the rest of the blogs taking part and see what other out of this world goodies you can bag!
Hi! Welcome to this week's #sffsat snippet. I'm continuing with my scifi romance short Imprint from the Tales from the SFR Brigade anthology, now available from Smashwords, B&N and Kobo for FREE! Yay! So, last time we met Jiona on a crazy plunge into traffic as she made her escape from a heist. Now she's back at her base, but all is not well...
The chamber beyond was in chaos. Cold washed through her. Jiona eyed the wreckage that had recently been her laboratory, her chest locking tight. While she’d been busting the TransGalactic Bank’s vault and dallying with Tevik, someone had turned over her hidden base. Which, judging by the evidence, was not well hidden enough. It couldn’t have been Tevik. It wasn’t his style for one, and he’d been so close on her trail at the bank she’d imagined his hot breath on the back of her neck the whole time she’d been on the job. No, this had to be someone else entirely. Either a rival or—
...and I'm so going to leave it hanging there. Bwah-ha-haaaa! If you want to find out exactly who or what is responsible, check out the book widget in the right hand side bar for links to various digital formats available. In the meantime, visit the other talents taking part in #sffsat by clicking on the banner below. Have fun!
Well, damn the resonance canons, full speed ahead! Tales from the SFR Brigade - a #free anthology of science fiction romance stories by eight authors - went live on Smashwords yesterday. Woo hoo! Er, yeah, we DID announce the expected release date as 14th July just a couple of days ago, but Editor-in-Chief 'Cali Hicks hit a fortunate pre-launch time knot, lol. So now you can download your free copy in a multitude of digital formats from here. And while you're at it, why not add it to your Goodreads shelf too. You can find it here.
Want more reasons to check the anthology out, aside from being free and shiny? What about the author line up?
1. "Imprint" – Pippa Jay
2. "Allure" – Amy Laurens
3. "Nobody’s Present" – Marcella Burnard
4. "The Stranger" – Kyndra Hatch
5. "Mission: Nam Selan" – Linnea Sinclair
6. "Prime Sensations" – Liana Brooks
7. "Envy’s Revenge" – Berinn Rae
8. "Whiskey and Starshine" – Erica Hayes
And if that isn't enough, here's the blurb -
Experience love and adventure among the stars in TALES FROM THE
SFR BRIGADE, a free digital anthology of eight Science Fiction Romance
stories.
* A space captain discovers the cyborg she loves just might be her greatest enemy.
* A mind-wiped prostitute risks all when she recruits a dangerous stranger to help her escape a terrible fate.
* A prisoner-of-war confronts the comrade who loved her, then left her for dead.
* A space-obsessed physics teacher is kidnapped by a far-too-charming alien.
* An apocalypse survivor battles the biomech-enhanced hunter who seeks to capture her.
* A young artist must choose between her comfortable life on Earth or a war-torn space colony with her beloved.
* A daring thief is on the run from the alien law man who is determined to bring her to justice.
* A widowed rebel leader tries to save the last remnants of humanity, one stranger at a time.
From Earth to the furthest
reaches of the galaxy, explore the worlds of Science Fiction Romance
with stories from Linnea Sinclair, Marcella Burnard, Erica Hayes, Liana
Brooks, Pippa Jay, Berinn Rae, Amy Laurens, and Kyndra Hatch.
BTW, the mini-blurbs make most excellent tweets. So if you'd like to help spread the word and get SFR out into the universe, the hashtag is #SFRBAntho.
So this morning I got an exciting update about the Tales from the SFR Brigade - an upcoming #FREE science fiction romance collection by seven stellar authors...and me. Lol. First up, there's been a slight change to the cover. Regretfully one of the original nine authors has withdrawn their story, and I'm sorry to see them leave. However, we now have the story order and the back of book blurb for the anthology. Here goes! *deep breath*
1. "Imprint" – Pippa Jay 2. "Allure" – Amy Laurens 3. "Nobody’s Present" – Marcella Burnard 4. "The Stranger" – Kyndra Hatch 5. "Mission: Nam Selan" – Linnea Sinclair 6. "Prime Sensations" – Liana Brooks 7. "Envy’s Revenge" – Berinn Rae 8. "Whiskey and Starshine" – Erica Hayes
So how do I feel about being first in that line up? Thrilled and incredibly nervous. But you don't want to know about that. You want the blurb, right? Here you go.
Experience love and adventure among the stars in TALES FROM THE
SFR BRIGADE, a free digital anthology of eight Science Fiction Romance
stories.
* A space captain discovers the cyborg she loves just might be her greatest enemy.
* A mind-wiped prostitute risks all when she recruits a dangerous stranger to help her escape a terrible fate.
* A prisoner-of-war confronts the comrade who loved her, then left her for dead.
* A space-obsessed physics teacher is kidnapped by a far-too-charming alien.
* An apocalypse survivor battles the biomech-enhanced hunter who seeks to capture her.
* A young artist must choose between her comfortable life on Earth or a war-torn space colony with her beloved.
* A daring thief is on the run from the alien law man who is determined to bring her to justice.
* A widowed rebel leader tries to save the last remnants of humanity, one stranger at a time.
From Earth to the furthest
reaches of the galaxy, explore the worlds of Science Fiction Romance
with stories from Linnea Sinclair, Marcella Burnard, Erica Hayes, Liana
Brooks, Pippa Jay, Berinn Rae, Amy Laurens, and Kyndra Hatch.
Squee! Full credit goes to Diane Dooley for drafting the back of book blurb (incidentally, Diane was also my editor on Imprint, and an absolute joy to work with!) so huge thanks to her! I'd also like to thank the SFR Brigade members for this project - 'Cali Hicks, Diane Dooley and Laurie Green. Kudos for your hard work on putting the anthology together! *salutes*
Plans are to offer the anthology on Amazon Kindle, B&N PubIt, Kobo, Sony, and Smashwords. We now have an expected release date of 14th July - Bastille Day! Stay tuned.
Her manta ray-shaped
flitter ship sat, in camouflage mode, nearby. The craft shimmered into a
reality of silver and black at her touch, gleaming in the hazy sunlight. Jiona
slipped inside, harnessed herself into the pilot’s seat, and fired up the engines.
As soon as it left the ground, she gunned the engines and plummeted over the
edge of the TransGalactic Bank’s three hundred story tower into the airborne
tumult of the traffic below.
As she dived into
the busy lanes of Chupalla, sirens blared. Jiona dodged oncoming vehicles with
ease, laughing. The criss-crossing exhaust trails and energy signals would
throw any pursuer off her track, and few law enforcers would be suicidal enough
to try following her. Still smiling, she dropped through the last lane and into
the sea of fuel fumes clouding the lower levels of the city, and headed for her
base. Only the smallest sliver of guilt tightened her chest as she thought of the
handsome man she’d left lying under a ticking bomb.
I've borrowed the video from the Fifth Element as I see 'the busy lanes of Chupalla' something like the traffic in Korben's city. The excerpt above is taken from my short story Imprint - part of the Science Fiction Romance Brigade's first and FREE anthology.
World building is my favourite part of writing - not just the description of a city or a planet, but the culture and people too. Whether it's completely alien, or whether it's a far future human society and world, or perhaps one that's regressed or still developing. I've had everything from a medieval culture with torturous similarities to the Spanish Inquisition, to a high tech hidden scientific base. A tropical paradise inhabited by a race of intelligent saurians to a decopunk city on an alternative Earth. I love them all. While my feet may be firmly fixed in my hometown of Colchester, I wander the rest of the universe in my head. Here's another. Excerpt -
Once more he found himself somewhere strangely other. An alien planet. A fierce thrill flowed through him, and he drew a long breath. It was early evening on this world, and humidly warm, as Quin had warned him. The blue of the sky was streaked with the colors of sunset, the red-gold sun sinking behind them, throwing long shadows. They stood before a building that put the palace of Adalucien to shame with its splendor, twisting up into the sky and reminding him of the convoluted interior of a tall cone shell, broken open to reveal the chambers inside.
It had a fluid, organic shape to it, as though it had been grown rather than built. Made of a pale, marbled orange material and shot through with threads of different colors–pinks and mauves, greens and blues–it looked as though it were flaming in the scarlet light of the evening sky. There was no regularity to its structure. Numerous pillars of varying thicknesses seemed to have sprung up like trees wherever they had felt they were needed, curving into broad ribs to support the ceilings.
It was hard to be sure with such an asymmetrical construction but Keir estimated it to be perhaps twenty stories upward, soaring in ever-tapering tiers into the clouds. Terracing curled around the outside of each level, aerial walkways lit by tiny blue-white stars strung like beads. He could see people walking along them and hoped they would not have to travel quite so high. ~The Shell Palace from Keir~
and Lyrical Press Inc. A 2012 Readers Favorite Award Finalist and 2012 SFR Galaxy Award Winner.
And because I love to share these worlds with other people, I'm offering a copy of my GCC RWA Contest finalist Science Fiction Romance Short - Terms & Conditions Apply - to one random person who leaves a comment on this post, telling me their favourite setting. But wait! Don't forget to enter the rafflecopter too. Want to know what that could win you? Well...
Blog Hop Grand Prizes
1st Prize - $150 Amazon or B&N gift card (winner's choice) and an ebook bundle (currently Ghost in the Machine, Bayne, Recast Book 1:Wither, Recast Book 2:Clash, Alien Adoration, Switched, Reckless Rescue, Wreck of the Nebula Dream, Keir, Terms & Conditions Apply, The Key, The Plan, Starburst, Marya, The Iron Admiral, Sasha’s Calling, Trouble at the Hotel Baba Ghanoush, Winter in Paradise, Once Upon a Time in Space, the Telomere trilogy, Winter Fusion, Blue Nebula, Demential, Wytchfire, Maven, Fires of Justice, Interface, Girl under Glass, and Breakout. Bonus books – Ghost Planet, The Iron Admiral: Conspiracy and Deception, and Games of Command.)
2nd Prize - $50 Amazon or B&N gift card (winner's choice)
3rd Prizes - four $25 Amazon or B&N gift cards (given to separate winners and their choice)
All of these goodies are available internationally, but for your chance to win you need to enter the rafflecopter below. And for a chance to win at the other blogs on the hop, go to the participant list below and hop along! Good luck. :)
Hello! *waves* Welcome back to another round of #sffsat snippets. Last week we left my young hero all disorientated and slumped in an Underway...and I'm afraid that's exactly where he's going to stay. Heh heh! Mean, I know. Instead, I want to share a snippet from my scifi romance short story Imprint, due to be part of the Tales from the SFR Brigade - a FREE anthology of science fiction romance stories, including one by Linnea Sinclair (squeee!) - that should be releasing at midsummer. I'm so excited to be part of this project and honoured to be with such a bunch of talented authors!
Anyhow, we are meeting my 'heroine' Jiona as she makes her escape from a bank heist...
Her manta ray-shaped
flitter ship sat, in camouflage mode, nearby. The craft shimmered into a
reality of silver and black at her touch, gleaming in the hazy sunlight. Jiona
slipped inside, harnessed herself into the pilot’s seat, and fired up the engines.
As soon as it left the ground, she gunned the engines and plummeted over the
edge of the TransGalactic Bank’s three hundred story tower into the airborne
tumult of the traffic below.
As she dived into
the busy lanes of Chupalla, sirens blared. Jiona dodged oncoming vehicles with
ease, laughing. The criss-crossing exhaust trails and energy signals would
throw any pursuer off her track, and few law enforcers would be suicidal enough
to try following her. Still smiling, she dropped through the last lane and into
the sea of fuel fumes clouding the lower levels of the city, and headed for her
base. Only the smallest sliver of guilt tightened her chest as she thought of the
handsome man she’d left lying under a ticking bomb.
And there you have it! Hopefully the rest of it will be available very soon now. I won't be taking part next week as I'll be very busy hosting and running the SFR Brigade's 2nd Midsummer Blog Hop, and the grand prizes are STUNNING. Pop back next week if you're interested in winning a stack of books and some serious cash-worthy gift cards. In the meantime, you can check out the other authors participating in Science Fiction Fantasy Saturday by clicking on the banner below.
