Starbound Lovers

What's your favorite sci-fi romance?

 

As Count Olaf asks (skip to 1:35 in the video) "Why so glum?"

H/T http://thatgeekchick.net

According to Wikipedia, time travel is an off-shoot of science-fiction. My book series, Tennessee Waltz, is time-travel plus sparkles--fairy sparkles that is.

And the final book in the series is almost here!
What started back in 2011 with Kiss Me, I'm Irish,


has finally come to fruition with Kiss Me, I'm Home.


Well, almost. It's currently in the editing process, but I wanted to give you a peek of the cover!
Here's the teaser:

From Amazon:

Love is made of more than mere flesh and blood....

Tanith Lee is one of the most thought-provoking and imaginative authors of our time. In this unforgettably poignant novel, Lee has created a classic tale--a beautiful, tragic, erotic, and ultimately triumphant love story of the future.

For sixteen-year-old Jane, life is a mystery she despairs of ever mastering. She and her friends are the idle, pampered children of the privileged class, living in luxury on an Earth remade by natural disaster. Until Jane's life is changed forever by a chance encounter with a robot minstrel with auburn hair and silver skin, whose songs ignite in her a desperate and inexplicable passion.

Jane is certain that Silver is more than just a machine built to please. And she will give up everything to prove it. So she escapes into the city's violent, decaying slums to embrace a love bordering on madness. Or is it something more? Has Jane glimpsed in Silver something no one else has dared to see--not even the robot or his creators? A love so perfect it must be destroyed, for no human could ever compete?

Treat yourself this Valentine's Day and check out this SFR classic!

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.

When it comes to Science-Fiction Romance fashion, why does it often seem metallic and a little gray and gloomy? 

Or weird and kooky?






Why can't Science-Fiction romance be softer? Prettier? And well, pinker?

Total Recall

Dredd

Apocalypse Babes--time-travel, frenemies, pink velour.

I came across a science article recently that gives a new twist to the term (and title of the blog) 'starbound lovers'. 

A group of stars was seen to be "a very intimate couple", "tightly bound" and "dancing around each other in a diabolic waltz" according to an article from The Register by Lewis Page.


Intimate. Bound....diabolical. 

Sounds a little like science-fiction romance.

The article continues:

"The pair in question are a so-called "stellar mass" black hole* and its twin, a Wolf-Rayet star perhaps 20 times as hefty as our own sun, located in the far-off galaxy NGC 300. The Wolf-Rayet star whips around the black hole every 32 hours, according to top boffins, with matter being pulled off it all the time by the intense gravitational field of its neighbour.

An intense gravitational field. 

Exactly.

"This is indeed a very 'intimate' couple," says Open University astro brainbox Robin Barnard. "How such a tightly bound system has been formed is still a mystery."

Perhaps a mystery called love?


Peruse the authors of this blog for a fantastic selection of starbound and starcrossed love and romance that even the heavens replicate...while enjoying this very appropriate tune: *Supermassive Black Hole by Muse.

Allow me to introduce myself. It won't take long. Basically my "real" life is vanilla bland, so my bio is short and pretty boring. Here goes: I'm Elysa Hendricks. I'm 5'6" tall. I have brown eyes and curly hair. I'm an author, a wife, a mother and a daughter. Everything else is subject to change without notice.



Because physically I'm clumsy, I have no sense of balance, and I'm a BIG coward, my rule for living is: "Boring is good. Excitement is vastly overrated." Once I tried riding a motor scooter. After a wobbly start I ran it into a ditch. When my so-called friends told me it's like riding a bicycle and I had to try again, I then wiped out. I guess I forgot to mention I'm no good at riding a bicycle either. In my younger years before I discovered I'm a klutz I broke my foot trying to ride a skateboard.  Heights terrify me. I get dizzy just watching movies about mountain climbing. After watching JAWS I decided I didn't like swimming in places where I couldn't see what was underneath me. So forget me doing things like sky diving, water skiing, or motor cross racing. Adventure is NOT my middle name. I like things calm and safe. How I managed to live through raising too adventure junkie sons is a miracle I'll never comprehend.

But in my fiction I break my rule into itsy bitsy tiny pieces and scatter them in space during a solar storm from a space ship, preferably a pirate one. I grew up reading Robert Heinlein, H.G. Wells, Issac Asimov, Arthur C. Clarke and watching cheap, trashy sci-fi movies and TV shows. Still watch them - hubby is a videoholic. Without risking a single hair on my head (and I have lots of them) I can get all the adrenaline rush I need from fiction.

Though I read and write all types of romance fiction: sweet contemporaries, gritty western historicals, and fantasy, my favorite is sci-fi romance. In my books I can be brave and daring. I can climb those impossible alien mountains. Wrestle shardak bears and water worms. Fight space battles. Have sex with a hot hero or two. All while wearing my flannel PJs, and sitting in the comfort of my cozy office with my fur babies in my lap.

But while I might avoid adventure in my own "real" life, I love hearing from readers and other authors about theirs: http://elysahendricks.com/



STAR CRASH is my first futuristic sci-fi romance.

When Star Trek meets Planet of the Apes, what's a girl to do?

After recon pilot Cora Daniels crash lands on an alien planet she finds herself a prisoner of the Flock: a race of birdlike humanoids. Trapped in their zoo she discovers they intend her to mate. To breed. To be part of their human herd.

She's placed in a cage with a man - a powerful, virile man, but not just any man - Alexander. Was he her lost love, who'd disappeared so long ago? Here he was: naked, glistening, a warrior trained by the Flock to fight for their amusement. How could the brilliant man, the tender lover she remembered have become this animal born to dominate and destroy? Was he a pawn of the Flock or would their flight to freedom be a long-sought reunion?

STAR CRASH is available from Amazon:
http://www.amazon.com/Star-Crash-Chronicles-ebook/dp/B007T2J9T0/ref=sr_1_1?s=digital-text&ie=UTF8&qid=1337177350&sr=1-1

I once had an English teacher who taught us Shakespeare with an episode of Star Trek--even wheeled the big AV Dept television set into class. Obviously, he was my favorite teacher.

The Star Trek episode was based on The Tempest and featured Kirk mincing around in a diaper-looking thing as Ariel. Shakespeare had never been so fun.

My teacher was a huge fan of the show because no matter what crazy things happened--space babes, time-travel, man-diapers...the characters always acted true to their established arcs. They were faithful to themselves. They were human--and acted every inch of it.

Another show that offered a bit of wisdom in this area was The Brady Bunch.


I was a latch-key kid and must've seen every episode about ten times after school. In one particular episode when Marsha is trying on her mother's makeup in an effort to be cool, she tells Carol "Times change." Carol comes back with "Times change, but people don't".

That has always stuck with me, and for me, is a reason why science-fiction romance resonates with readers. Not only are plots and story ideas as endless as the writer's imagination, but they can always resonate with readers when we realize people are still people--who will act in predictably human ways.

Even in the most trying circumstances throughout history, people still met and fell in love, and made babies to repeat the cycle. It's what makes it all worth it.

That's what grounds us and makes us able to endure wildly changing circumstances--and the sight of William Shatner in a pink loin cloth.

What's your favorite sci-fi romance?