Edward Hoornaert's Blog, page 82

Interstellar Scifi Romance Release Party

On May 20, 2015, join Mr V (Edward Hoornaert) at the Interstellar Scifi Romance Release Party!

Sponsored by Travis Luedke and Kayla Stonor, this world celebration features guest author appearances (including Mr. V, aka Edward Hoornaert), giveaways, games, prizes and more!

ANGEL 6.0: Enslaved to a Catlike Alien race of Warriors, Angel is whisked away to the far side of the galaxy. Experience her struggle to survive captivity as a concubine.

HUNTED: Running from Alien abductors who’ve put a price on his head, Raiss finds sanctuary and companionship with a strangely beautiful half-breed who risks her life to save his.

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Guest authors will join the party with more fun and prizes. I’ll be on the hot seat from 3:30 to 4:00 Central time, so join me then for chances to win my latest release, Alien Contact for Idiots. Click the picture below to join the party. Noisemakers and funny looking hats are optional, as are clothes (unless you’re at work, of course).

Effing Feline Needs Money (now on SFFS, too!)

Fart-Fueled Flying Feline, Effing for short, writes these SFFS and Eight Sentence Sunday posts on Mr. Hoornaert’s behalf

I, Effing Feline, neade munny.

Lemme try that again. I need money!  The bird who does my typing is on strike and threatening to fly north from Arizona fur the summer unless I pay him more birdseed. I’m a creative geenius but a terrible speller–yet how’s a poor riter to make any money when services cost so much? Typists an editors make more than i do! Sigh.

Last weak I interduced the heroine of Mr. V’s soon-to-be-released  Alien Contact for Kid Sisters, as well as Reese, a prince from an alternate Earth she likes but doesn’t luv.  Skipping ahead a bit, he slips a huge ring on her finger.

The diamonds flashed and winked in the light, alive with splendor and legend—but she pulled drunkenly at the ring, wanting it off right now. Reese knew American customs well enough to understand the significance of that particular finger.

“Marianne, be my wife,” Reese said, “my princess.”

She opened her mouth, not knowing what she could possibly say.

And she never did find out.

Without warning, the hotel shook from the deafening roar of an explosion. The map crashed to the floor. Plaster dust rained into the air. Marianne’s teeth rattled.

As though blown by a giant’s sneeze, she bounced off the bed and landed hard on her bottom.

Ends with a bang, eh? Be sure to check out the other posts for Science Fiction and Fantasy Saturday and Eight Sentence Sunday. And tell me, quick, how to get Mr. V on the NY Times bestseller list so maybe I can afford to pay the stoopid bird!

Check out other posts by Effing Feline, too

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Something to Look Forward To

My wife always likes having something nice to look forward to. She doesn’t lives only for the future, rather than the present; she just wants the future to fill  her  mind with anticipation — sort of like a child eager for Christmas to come.

If you’re like her, I have something for you to salivate over when you peruse your calendar.

The Science Fiction Romance Brigade is planning another blog hop, The Summer Cafe, and this one promises to be the biggest and best yet. Lots of books!  New authors and old favorites! Prizes galore!

SFR Brigade Summer Cafe

June 1 through July 12, 2015

Each week, a different flavor of SFR will be featured, with appetizers, main courses, and dessert. The menu for the Space Opera week that includes Edward Hoornaert, aka Mr. V (July 6…mark it on your calendars) is shown above. Each week, a Rafflecopter winner will be selected.

Here are the participating authors (list subject to change):

Space Opera 1 – 1st-5th June

Appetizers – Greta van der Rol and Athena Grayson.

Main course – Pauline Baird Jones, Veronica Scott, and Amelia Treader.

Dessert – Carol Van Natta
Weird Science – 8th-12th June

Main course – Aurora Springer, Debra Jess, Deborah A Bailey, Starla Huchton, SA Hoag, and Teresa D’Amario

Dessert – Liana Brooks
Dystopia – 15th-19th June

Appetizers – Rae Lori and Jessica E Subject

Main – KM Fawcett, Michelle Browne, Angela Sparrow, SE Gilchrist, and Kate Corcino
Androids and Aliens – 22nd-26th June

Appetizers – Kyndra Hatch and Eva Lefoy

Main course – Rachel Leigh Smith, Pippa Jay, Linda Mooney, Melisse Aires, Christina Westcott and Wendy Lynn Clark
Supernova Hot – 29th June-3rd July

Appetizers – ML Skye and Misa Buckley.

Main course – Travis Luedke, Cathryn Cade, Teresa Noelle Roberts, Gabriel Belthir, and Charlee Allden
Space Opera 2 – 6th-10th July

Appetizers – Vicky Burkholder.

Main course – Mary Brock Jones, Diane Burton, Kayla Stonor, Liza O’Connor, Heidi Ruby Miller, Nina Croft, and (saving the best for last!) Ed Hoornaert

The Summer Cafe opens in just a couple of weeks, so stay tuned to this channel for more information.

Effing Feline Misses Mummy

Fart-Fueled Flying Feline, Effing for short, writes the Eight Sentence Sunday posts on Mr. V’s behalf

I, Effing Feline, miss my mummy. I bet you think cats don’t care about our mummies, but that’s just vicious anti-feline prejudice.

I think about Mum’s loving tongue cleaning my ears. The comforting feel of her mouth as she picked me up by the scruff of her neck. The bat of her elegant paw as she warned me not to provoke the Doberman by scratching its rear end as it ate.

And now she’s disappeared from her mouser job at the violin factory. Mummy!

Last week I introduced the hero of Mr. V’s Alien Contact for Kid Sisters. Here’s the heroine, Marianne Harmon, who has celebrated a bit too much at the Royal Ball with Prince Charming, who isn’t her Mr. Right. But be forewarned, Marianne’s not a mother.

“I don’t know the rules on your world, buddy, but on my planet gentlemen don’t take advantage of ineeb…ineep…drunken ladies.” Marianne wagged a finger at him.

“Vast difference, m’dear, between tipsy and drunk.” Prince Reese held up three fingers. “How many do you see?”

“Eleven.”

Without a trace of a smile, Reese looked at her. He always waited patiently when she tried to joke — it was his most annoying trait.

“Okay, three,” she grumbled. Sure, she was a lousy comedienne, but did he have to stare?

Kid Sisters is available for pre-order on Amazon. Be sure to check out the other posts for today’s Eight Sentence Sunday. And call your mum while you still can, eh?

And one more thing: the first book in this series, Alien Contact for Idiots, is available for free on Amazon Sunday and Monday.

Effing Feline Is Hissed Off

Fart-Fueled Flying Feline, Effing for short. Effing writes these Eight Sentence Sunday posts on Mr. Hoornaert’s behalf

I, Effing Feline, am hissed off.

For this week’s Eight Sentence Sunday, I wanted to continue with another excerpt from Escapee, an SF romance that Mr. Valentine (aka Edward Hoornaert) recently sold and which will be released early next year. I was just about to introduce the story’s heroic kitten, and I had a big speech prepared.

But no, Mr. V says I can’t do it! Insensitive meanie! He says he has a book coming out later this month that he wants me to promote, Alien Contact for Kid Sisters.  The hero, Quinn Lebatarde, is a small-time scam artist who does NOT own a cat. With no cats in this story, who cares?

Quinn stuck out his tongue at the policewoman and then, before she could demand his nonexistent business license, he upended the table, shattering priceless, phony carvings, knocking Squitt on her ass, and sending the twenty-dollar bills he held fluttering toward the ground. Quinn plucked the bills out of midair, kissed them, and ran.

Only a few steps, though. His escape hatch—he always had an escape hatch when pulling a scam—lay in the opposite direction, beyond where Squitt struggled underneath the table. Instead of escaping right away, though, he bent down to grab a mask and a totem pole that hadn’t broken. He shoved them in the White Sox fan’s arms and ruffled the boy’s hair.

“A gift, kid, from my world to yours.”

The delay gave Squitt almost enough time to lift the table off her, but Quinn shoved it back down and stomped across it, drawing satisfying oofs from the gendarme.

Boring without a cat, don’t you agree? But go ahead and check out the other posts for today’s Eight Sentence Sunday. Maybe they write about cats.

   [Ed Hoornaert here; Effing refused to write anything more, so it’s up to me to tell you that Alien Contact for Kid Sisters is a sequel to Alien Contact for Idiots. It stands alone, though, so you don’t need to have read the first book. Kid Sisters is available for pre-order on Amazon.]

Begone, Stereotypes!

Imagining a Future Run by Aboriginal Americans, part one

In my Alien Contact series, humans from two different alternate Earths collide when a duplicate of Vancouver Island, the largest island off the west coast of the Americas, mysteriously appears off the coast of Washington State. It was propelled there by people from the future hoping to escape their planet’s environmental collapse.

EARTH ONE is our world, a year or more in the future.  ’Nuff said.
EARTH TWO shared our world’s history until around 1800, so there are many similarities—but also many differences.

(If you aren’t familiar with the series, the first book is Alien Contact for Idiots, which is already available. The second book, Alien Contact for Kid Sisters, will be available May 30, 2015.)

For story purposes, the most important difference between the two Earths is that the Pacific Northwest is run by descendants of indigenous peoples, rather than Americans or Canadians as we know them.  This meant that I had to project what a culture run by indigenous peoples, but influenced by technology, mass immigration, and a world economy might be like. All of this is background, not the meat of the stories, but I made a real effort to build a plausible aboriginal culture with technology more advanced than ours. I’d like to share some of my thought process with you.

Why Vancouver Island?

I wanted a chunk of land that could be easily (hah!) separated from North America. That ruled out the Navaho lands, which would’ve been my second choice.
Before I started the series, I was fairly familiar with tribes of the Pacific Northwest, which helped.
Totem poles from the region are widely known, so readers may have at least a passing acquaintance with the cultures.
The Pacific Northwest was one of the last regions of North America to be colonized. By 1800, when the timelines split apart, native cultures were still intact, which can’t be said for all regions. This made extrapolation easier.
France won the Battle of Waterloo on my alternate Earth, conquering England. Shortly thereafter, France conquered the US, too.

What, you ask does the Battle of Waterloo have to do with native cultures on Vancouver Island? Lots!

You see, the Pacific Northwest is quite remote from France, and before the Panama Canal it was almost impossibly remote. Without the westward push of immigration from the US, the natives had time to assimilate western technology before they were overrun by it.

They also had time to form a nation state of their own, the Northwest Coast Kingdom, led by the Haida tribe. By the time European immigrants started flooding the northwest, a few decades later than on our Earth, the kingdom was strong enough to withstand the onslaught of whites.

(To be continued…)

Effing Feline 04-26-15

Fart-Fueled Flying Feline, Effing for short. Effing writes these Eight Sentence Sunday posts on Mr. Hoornaert’s behalf

I, Fart-Fueled Flying Feline, am a soldier model, with built-in weapons and a nasty attitude!

Unfortunately, I can’t prove it, as I’ve never actually caught and killed anything.  Mr. V., aka Edward Hoornaert, has no mice in his house, and I’m not allowed outside to hunt birds even though Southern Arizona hosts the largest number of bird species outside of the Amazon basin.  It’s not fair!

You’ll see the significance of ‘soldier model’ in this snippet from Escapee, which will be published early next year.  Catt, the civilian pilot of a supply airship, has just landed at Castle Mountain fortress, destroyed by an enemy attack.  Here she talks with Lancelot, her android co-pilot.

Whenever fear and hopelessness threatened to overwhelm her, Catt responded by keeping busy, and now she concentrated on guiding Escapee to its softest landing ever. That wasn’t easy, because the wind had resumed its usual howl, a ruined crawler blocked the center of the landing pad, and the northwest quadrant of the pad was blasted to rubbish.

When the ship was down, she scanned all radio frequencies, but static reigned instead of the usual greetings. At least no one ordered her, in nasal, almost incomprehensible Proximanian Basic, to come out with her hands up.

After Catt donned her bio-suit, she handed Lance the only weapons she could find: a carving knife and a heavy propane cylinder to use as a club. “If anyone other than me comes aboard, kill them.”

“Kill?” Lance dropped the ersatz weapons, which clattered to the hollow metal deck plates. “Killing is counter to manufacturer’s parameters, Catt — I am not a soldier model.”

Catt should’ve had me with her. I’d take care of all the #^@% enemy invaders with one claw tied behind my tail!  Grr hiss!

For more great snippets, check out the other posts for today’s Eight Sentence Sunday.

Happy Birthday, Hubble!

The Hubble space telescope has revolutionized mankind’s notions of the cosmos.  A few of its achievements:

Determining the age of the universe (1.38 billion years)
Discovering that the universe is expanding more rapidly now than in the past
Proving the existence of black energy
Discovering planets outside of our solar system

(Click here for a glimpse of NASA’s travel posters for some of these exoplanets)
Increasing many people’s awe through the incredible beauties of creation

Scientists recently celebrated the 25th anniversary of Hubble’s launch.  Here are some links to help you celebrate, too

Happy birthday, Hub!
Hubblecast Episode 84: A starry snapshot for Hubble’s 25th.
Put Hubble on your desktop–deep space wallpaper.
Hubble’s replacement, the James Webb space telescope, is now in testing.

April Fools for Love #2

If you haven’t yet entered the raffle for the great prizes in the April Fools for Love blog tour, you still can–but don’t put it off, because time is running out.

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April Fools is a perfect theme for my brand new release, Alien Contact for Idiots. Why? Here’s the opening of the book:

Seattle, Washington. The early hours of April 1, next year.

As long as this  blog hop lasts (the end of April, 2015) you can also get my new science fiction romance, Alien Contact for Idiots, free for the asking. Just leave a comment or send me a message on my contact page.  (Currently available for Kindle only, sorry.) Can’t beat that price!

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To learn about other great SFRom, be sure to visit the other writers in the tour — and if you haven’t already done so,  click her to enter a Rafflecopter giveaway for a chance to win great prizes (including Alien Contact for Idiots).

First prize: $75 gift card and 16 ebooks
Second prize: $25 gift card and 12 ebooks
Third prize: $25 gift card and 8 ebooks

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And while you’re in the neighbourhood, check out the New SFR pages, which have a bunch of great new books featuring love in and under the stars!

Thoughts while resting a bum leg

I’m sitting here with an ice pack on my elevated left leg (don’t ask–not worth your time or mine), and while I’m immobile I thought I’d share a few quick thoughts. If you haven’t visited the New SFR Pages lately, you might want to wander on by. Lots of great stuff by hard-working writers. Recent additions include works by:

CE Kilgore
AR DeClerck
Aurora Springer
Christie Meierz
Travis Luedke

I like promoting books by other authors, but the truth is an awful lot of the writers I read don’t need promotion. For instance, I just finished reading The Annotated Pride and Prejudice: A Revised and Expanded EditionThe annotations added a lot to my enjoyment…but really, does Jane Austen need me to sing her praises?

Speaking of book promotion

Many of the authors I know obsess about promoting their books. Delilah Dawson has written a couple of great posts on the topic. I particularly enjoyed the first one:

Please shut up!
Wait! Keep talking!

One of the comments is wonderful, too: “What worked even three years ago no longer does.” Amen.

Tapping the ol’ toes

Finally, a piece of  music to make you want to dance. (That’s you, not me. Bum leg, remember?) The Sabre Dance made the top ten most popular tunes, back when “classical music” wasn’t automatically shunned by cultural snobs–so give it a listen!