Starbound Lovers

It's been fun the past few months to stop by a new group of readers and share my thoughts on my favorite genre. Unfortunately, work and life are becoming dangerously over-booked (I'm exhausted and constantly on the verge of some sort of cold) so I need to let go of those commitments I can. While I enjoy blogging, I need to dedicate my limited writing time to finishing stories my readers have been requesting.

If you'd like to keep up with my progress, I'll still be maintaining my regular schedule at my author blog and I'll drop by Twitter on a fairly regular basis. I'm trying to cut down on online distractions in general since my work schedule has ballooned past 60 hours and my husband and my Huskies take priority over my online life in this new reality.

My last bit of happiness has to do with the news from Readers' Favorite that my first novel earned a 5-star review. With the perspective of 2 additional novels under my belt, I've been doubting my debut, so it was nice validation--and an additional nudge to re-focus on my fiction writing.

Thanks for letting me join your community for a while, and I look forward to catching up with my new author friends when work settles down again.

Because I'm still thrilled that my pre-press team has said this is my best story yet... and because I'm a little stuck for what to blog about this month now that the initial release crazy is somewhat past, you get to hear about Wytchfire one last time.

I promise, you'll be excited when I tell you why, too: I've been participating in the SFR Brigade 2nd annual blog hop. The team of authors participating includes Sabrina Garie, who also blogs here, so you know there's a great group of prizes... including the one whose cover features here.

;)

We're down to the final two days of the blog hop, so if you want to get in on the prizes listed below, stop by my blog or Sabrina's and leave a comment to enter the Rafflecopter.

1st Prize – $150 Amazon or B&N gift card (winner’s choice) and an ebook bundle (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, 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, Games of Command, Stark Pleasure, The Plan, and Starburst).
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)

Good luck, one and all!

I'm happy to announce that the preview post I gave you at the end of last month made it through final edits and revisions, and went live this month. Wytchfire is ready and waiting for your reading pleasure.

In keeping with its shorter length (it clocked in just under 10,000 words), the blurb is very short:

Can she remember enough to save herself? Can she change enough to save her planet?

It's available as an eBook at Amazon and Smashwords.

It's been a busy month for me. That novelette I told you about last month...? I managed to finish the first draft this week.

Normally, that would be cause for celebration. In this case, I'm expecting major re-writes.

The premise fascinates me: A woman wakes with amnesia, very pregnant and is challenged to a series of tests to discover more of who she is. It felt like an adult take on Alice In Wonderland while I was writing it. When she finally wakes up, the whole story detours into pure scifi in a way I hadn't expected when I started, but had me very excited... until I had to figure out what the end point really was.

So I won't make any promises about when anybody else gets to read the whole story, but it will be coming soon. In the meantime, here's a snippet to whet your appetite:

How did she even know people could check dental records to confirm an individual's existence? Her brain felt like Swiss cheese. It was time to do a more exhaustive inventory of what was in her room to see whether there were any clues to who she might be.

An hour later, she had neat piles of maternity shirts, pants, sweaters, jackets, and underwear on one side of the bed, while the other held a few romance novels with heroines looking almost as busty as she was stacked next to a small selection of children's books.

She was as much of a mystery to herself as she'd ever been. Who was this woman who seemed to have Ann Klein-style taste in clothing, insipid reading material, and no other indication of identity?

She revisited the products from the bathroom counter. Clinique. Apparently she was one of those high-maintenance women who had to go out perfectly made up and styled?

It didn't feel right. So was her missing memory part of a radical personality change? Or was someone trying to make her conform to their ideal?

She shivered. She'd try to hold off on the paranoia until she had proof there was something more sinister at play, but it seemed odd that she'd been up and moving around for so long and nobody had come to check on her, if she really were institutionalized. Staring at the backs of her hands, she realized there were small scars across her knuckles; this was not the picture of a stylish woman to match the clothes and makeup in her space. In fact, she felt strong--despite the large bulge of her belly. And despite the lack of real challenge to her muscles in reviewing the belongings in the room.

If you want more updates, feel free to stalk me elsewhere online at my own blog, Twitter, or Facebook. See you again next month!

Hello  lovers of SciFi Romance. In case you missed it, four amazing authors have joined our group blog. Many have already introduced themselves but in case you missed it, they are:

Kimber Vale

Kimber Vale has enjoyed putting pen to paper since she was old enough to hold a writing utensil in her odd-ball, left-handed way.  It never slowed her down.  From dire poetry inspired by stupid boys in high school, to "student's choice" research papers about Lord Byron's satire and Poe's vampire in "The Fall of the House of Usher," Kimber has always had a passion for the funny, the dark, and the romantic.  Combining all three is frequently her goal.


An RN by trade, Kimber has taken a number of years off to raise three little people. She plans to get back to the healing business soon, but is thrilled to finally be writing in earnest.   She publishes horror under the name on her driver's license, and erotic romance in her Mrs. Hyde form.  Kimber reads and writes erotica of every variety.  Her current passion is Male/Male erotic romance, which she pens under the name K. Vale.  Kimber will continue to write heterosexual stories in addition to gay erotic romance.

Hi all - happy to join the team, and looking forward to some good discussions about my favorite genres: Sci-Fi and Fantasy. Of course, since they are my favorite genres, they're where I gravitated with my first novels. I've published three novels and a short story in the past year through Katarr Kanticles Press, which is about as close to indie as I can get without actually hitting the publishing button myself. The publisher, G.L. Drummond, has been kind enough to become more than a mentor over the past few years as I tested my writing wings, and I've learned more about the ins and outs of indie publishing in that time than I ever imagined might be possible.

I'm now a staunch indie, loving the fact that I have control over cover art, blurbs, pricing, release dates, the editor I work with, and all those other OCD control-freak elements that can give authors premature gray hair. On the other hand, it also means that promotion is entirely up to me. From what I've read, that's largely the case anyway at the bigger publishing houses, so it's not like I'd get much help anyway, but it means that when I get opportunities like these, I'm more than happy to share covers, blurbs, and buy links.

;)

My first novel-length idea was based on a dream I had--and almost immediately became an idea for a trilogy. The underlying question was: Could the Communist countries have stayed in power as long as they did because they subverted the power of their magical beasts? The first one is set in the Russian Federation shortly after the fall of the Soviet Union, so book two explores the Chinese angle, and immediately follows the first one chronologically. Book three will feature North Korea.


It's not all geopolitics, as the stories feature dragons and (in book two) much more of a paranormal romance theme. They're what my college lit professor would designate "low fantasy" in that they're set in a world we recognize, but have elements to them that aren't part of our daily experience. Here are the cover images of the two books that have already been released in the series, Red Slaves.


My second novel-length idea was inspired by sky-is-falling speculation in some news outlets that turning on the Large Hadron Collider would annihilate the Earth. It's written from the perspective of a newly married scientist ... who loses a Higgs boson. My speculation was that since that particle is also called "the God particle" that it might operate as a plug keeping an individual soul in place in a specific reality in the space-time continuum.


I'm working on a novella at the moment, and would like to release the third Red Slaves novel by the end of the year, but I'm also in the middle of classes to earn my MBA in marketing and project management--I figure both skill sets will serve me well as I progress down the road to an indie writing career. When I'm not blogging here, I'm online at my own blog, Twitter, or Facebook.