Tracy Cooper-Posey's Blog, page 17
September 22, 2022
A Taste for Blood
We’re only two weeks away from the launch of Four Awesome Threesomes, so that means it’s sample time.
The very first book in the collection is Bannockburn Binding, book 1 of the Beloved Bloody Time MMF urban fantasy futuristic time travel romance series. (Say that three times fast.)
So here is the first chapter of Bannockburn Binding.
EXCERPT FROM FOUR AWESOME THREESOMES
COPYRIGHT (C) 2022 TRACY COOPER-POSEY
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
Stirling, Scotland, 1314 A.D.
Laying siege could be a mighty boring business. That was why he found the lass in the first place and why he kept her, in the second. That was the excuse Rob would always give himself. As for what happened after, well, that was another matter entirely.
Rob found himself south of Stirling Castle, giving his horse a slack rein and enjoying the cool April air. This far away, the noises Edward’s troops made as they surrounded the castle were silenced. Instead, the natural sounds of the woods emerged.
He came upon her at the edge of the woods near the burn. Oh, she was quiet enough to be sure, but her manservant made the basic error of moving upon dry leaves.
In a heartbeat Rob was on them, his dirk against her throat, leaning over them from his saddle. She stood slim and tall, still as a statue. There was no fear in her face.
Her manservant looked set to expire. He trembled and flinched at the snorts and sidesteps of Rob’s warhorse, while his eyes stayed wide upon the blade at his mistress’ throat.
“Now, here’s a pretty picture,” Rob declared. “What might a wee lass like ye be doing wandering the wastes of the Bannock burn?”
The manservant clutched at the rich blue fabric of her gown in a most unseemly way and murmured in her ear. Advice. Entreaty. She spoke quietly in reply, low enough that Rob could not hear the words. It mattered not a wit. Rob waited out their conference with unusual patience. The day was a fine one, he had naught else to do and she was a pleasing distraction.
She finally looked him square in the eye again. Her own eyes were a dark, dark brown that was almost black. “M’lord, I wandered too close to Stirling Castle.” She spoke with a soft lowland Scots lilt. “With your leave, I would be on my way and leave the rest of your day untrammeled by a manservant’s stupidity.” At that, she glared at her servant. Clearly, he had led her astray.
“Why would ye be abroad at such a time?”
“I…er…I was collecting the last of the mushrooms.”
Rob slid to the ground and stepped closer to her. She was tall for a woman and came up to his shoulder. He snatched her wrist, pulling it up behind her back. “Then where be ye basket, my lady?”
The servant moaned, clearly distressed beyond sense.
Rob had both hands in use, so he jabbed sharply with his elbow, smashing the man’s nose and dropping him to the ground. It would shut the man up, at the very least.
The lady’s eyes widened, but she spoke no word of protest.
“That’s two lies I’ve caught ye in,” Rob told her. “Do ye care to spare me more by telling me the truth?”
She swallowed. The movement drew his gaze to her throat. It was pale, slender and pure. No gauze hid it from his sight, although her hair was behind a veil. Her gown was of some fine, thick material, but failed to disguise the willow-suppleness of her figure.
“I have not lied to ye,” she retorted, still showing no fear.
Her manservant rolled on the ground beside her, his hands to his face. He examined the blood coating his fingers and looked up at her. “Jesus H. Christ,” he slurred, his voice congested by the blood. “He’s broken my goddam nose!”
Rob’s heart thudded hard. The man’s accent was strange and he spoke English—an odd type of English, one that Rob had never heard before. But any English was an insult to his ears.
He grabbed the girl’s arm before she could react, pulled out his sword and swapped his knife for the longer blade. He rested the sword against her throat. “Three falsehoods. Yer man is English or I’ll eat my own gizzards. So what does that make you, hmm?”
“M’lord, ye canna think—”
He shook her, halting her words. “Ye speak as I do, right enough, but ye wear the garments of a lady and there’s naught Scots ladies to be found round here. They’ve all repaired to the highlands ‘til the King routs the bloody English.”
She was pure bred and of high enough station to be able to look him square in the eye. “You must release me. My family—”
“Might be willing to part with the odd coin or two for ye return, I’m thinking,” Rob finished softly. He found he was staring at her eyes again. The color was a wonder. Rich, dark, mysterious. “Mushroom gathering requires a basket and ye’ve none about ye,” he added.
“I left it by the burn.”
“I wager no basket exists.”
“You must let me go,” she repeated as firmly as she could, but Rob saw the shallow, frantic throbbing of her blood in the sweet curve of her throat.
“I must do nothing ye say of me,” he told her. “I am Robert David Bruce MacKenzie, cousin and officer to Edward Bruce and cousin to Robert the Bruce, King of Scotland.” He smiled grimly. “And you, my lady, are my prisoner and at my command.”
* * * * *
Sydney, Australia. 2262 A.D.
Charbonneau re-settled the hat on his head to better shade his face from the relentless Australian sunshine and crossed the square. Sydney was much nicer since they had banned all traffic except pedestrian, but even the speedy slide walks didn’t help against the belting heat. He crossed the square, looking up to his left every now and again towards the big coat-hanger shaped bridge.
Bigger still—and more mind-boggling—was the cable that snaked up into the sky behind it. It rose, and continued to rise, until it disappeared from sight. It was the first time he had seen the Sydney beanstalk for himself and it was just as attention-grabbing as friends had warned him it would be.
On the side of the square he was heading for there was a long row of terraced professional buildings with eclectic designer fascias made of materials designed to look natural; faux stone, brick and wooden sidings. The retro-look had been fashionable fifty years ago, when the square had been renovated and the tenants and buyers had all possessed well-moneyed reputations that matched the up-market location and price of the trendy buildings.
Half a century later, the buildings were still in well-preserved states, thanks to upscale clientele and thriving businesses housed within.
Charbonneau saw the familiar subdued, classic logo over the door of one of the buildings with a stone fascia. He wove his way through the tourists and day-trippers, shoppers and strollers. Many of them were standing and staring at the beanstalk or capturing images. The square was a prime viewpoint for watching the cable cars head up the stalk, another reason for the premium cost of the real estate around here.
Charbonneau pushed open the polarized door beneath the logo, stepped out of the sun gratefully and took off his hat.
A woman in a classic early twenty-first century suit stood up as he entered and flashed him a smile. Human, he categorized and possibly on her second regeneration. It was getting harder to tell these days, as cellular restructuring grew more sophisticated.
He smiled back, to disarm her.
“Welcome to Chronologic Tours, sir,” she told him. “Is there someone I can let know you are here?”
“Bon jour,” he returned. “It was merely impulse, a whim. Is there someone I can speak to? I do not wish to cause trouble at all.”
“Il est sans ennui,” she assured him in perfect French. “We’re delighted you decided to visit us.” She glanced down at the screen embedded in her desk. “Would you be willing to share your name with me, so I can introduce you properly to one of our representatives?”
Subtle, Charbonneau thought. It was possible they were already trying to scan his retina, or his pheromone signature, so she could assess if he were a threat or not. But she was asking to use his name, to save embarrassing or alarming him with their security screening.
“You can call me Charbonneau,” he told her. “That will do. For now.” His implied promise of future frankness at least matched their good manners.
She led him into a room that might have been a waiting room or a sales office, but really looked more like a private library or lounge room, with dark walls and what had to be a very fake, very sincere-looking fireplace in the corner, that crackled and popped comfortably. There was no desk. A sofa and a coffee table were grouped in the middle of the room and a pair of armchairs flanked the fire.
“This is our Roosevelt room,” she explained, plumping up a cushion and offering him one of the armchairs. “It is an historical replica, of course.”
“Of course.” Charbonneau sat down to wait, letting them complete their unobtrusive scanning without protest. The fun would start as soon as they had processed the feedback. He could be patient.
* * * * *
Stirling, Scotland, 1314 A.D.
Rob dragged the servant and his lady into the encampment shortly after the mid-day lull, when everyone was busy with new-found energy and enthusiasm. It also meant everyone would be focused on the castle, so his two captives would rouse the least amount of interest.
He avoided asking himself why he wanted to draw no attention. Later, he would think about it.
For now, the woman’s servant was trouble enough to deal with. He pushed his boot into the man’s behind, encouraging him to keep moving. The man was staggering and moving slowly, making hard going of it.
Rob was puzzled by the man’s over-reaction to the bloody nose and having his hands fastened behind his back. The man was simply terrified, making Rob wonder how long he had been in the service of gentry. In this day and age, capture and ransom was the way of things. Rob had been gentle enough with him, considering.
Rob tugged on Thunder’s halter, encouraging the horse to follow the man’s uneven progress. He glanced up at the woman on Thunder’s saddle. She had managed to arrange her gown so that not even an ankle was revealed, despite her hands being tied to the horse.
“Do ye have a name you’ll give me?” he asked of her.
She glanced at him. “One ye’ll believe is mine?”
She had him there.
“But if ye give me ye name,” Rob countered, “The quicker this’ll all be done with. If ye don’t, we must figure out who ye be and it’ll all take the longer. An army camp is no place for a lady, I assure ye. Even an English one.”
“Especially an English one, in this camp,” she amended. “But you fail to mention that the English king will be here to save his castle before midsummer. If I am English, I will also be saved.”
Rob snorted. “Yon Edward won’t move his buttocks out of England, not even for his last Scottish castle. Dinna hold ye breath for that.”
“He will,” she said softly. Firmly. “You’ve given him just the excuse he needs to march his army into Scotland and break King Robert and every last man of ye.”
Rob halted the horse and looked up at her. “How’s a fine young thing as you get to know of such matters?” he said sharply.
She hesitated and he could feel her caution. “I am a woman. Men speak freely in front of me because I am of no account. So I hear things.”
“And remember them, aye?” Rob nudged Thunder back into motion. “Ye confirm with every word yer high status, my lady. I’m thinking ye’ll raise a goodly number of coins.”
“I think you’ll be surprised,” she returned, still speaking softly. Her assured manner was more the fit of a much older woman, or even a man seasoned in battle or politics. Yet she seemed barely to have blossomed into womanhood.
And a fine, fine womanhood it was, a voice whispered in Rob’s mind.
He tugged at Thunder’s halter irritably, making the big beast snort a protest, for he was already moving forward. Rob scowled at the muddy ground they were crossing, trying not to glance over his shoulder at the fresh young thing sitting on his saddle. The English army might think nothing of returning a woman to her family with her virtue spoiled and her innocence gone, but that didn’t happen in Robert’s army. Well, not in Edward Bruce’s army, at least.
Rob kicked the whimpering manservant again, as he amended the thought. Not in my charge, then. Not while she belongs to me.
“You’d better hope your English king hurries himself,” he told her, keeping his eyes on his tent, fifteen paces ahead, where he could lock her away from his sight and his thoughts. “If ye’ll not tell me who ye are, he is ye best hope for rescue.”
“He is not my king,” she returned, “Any more than he is your king.”
“So ye say.” It was a feeble retort, but the best he could manage. Suddenly, he was desperate to return to the mindless watch at the base of the castle and the ribald masculine chatter around the building of the siege engines. Even Prince Edward’s sharp tongue would be welcome.
“My name is Caitriona,” she murmured. Her voice seemed to whisper in his ear.
He reached up and released her hands from their bonds and grasped the trim waist to assist her down. His fingers nearly met and his body tightened in response. He could feel warmth and soft flesh, beneath the cloth of her gown.
He cleared his throat. The rope was still fastened around each wrist and he gripped it, looking at her. “Ye give me ye word ye won’t try to escape and I’ll leave the bonds be.”
“I canna do that.”
He sighed and pulled her into the warm, dim tent, leaving her manservant crouched, whimpering, on the ground beneath Thunder’s nose. He’d deal with him after.
The inside of the tent, he was relieved to see, had been tidied by the pageboy he shared with four other officers. It had been a half-hearted attempt, but the tent at least looked somewhat civilized. The furs on the ground had been beaten and re-laid and his personal belongings stowed in the chest.
Rob lifted the rope around the woman’s wrist up and hitched it to the tent pole, high up above her head so she could not lift the rope off by herself. It raised her hands very high. For a moment, they stood face to face, with only the heavy bole of the tent support between them.
Sweet temptation soared through his veins in a scalding, aching rush. He had only to drop his hand from the rope, slide it down the length of her arm, to tuck his hand beneath the heavy swell of her breast where it lifted her gown in a full, ripe mound….
She was looking him square in the eye. There was not a single whisper of coyness in her glance. He wondered for an insane moment that if he dared let his gaze linger in the depth of her eyes, would he see mutual knowledge there?
He made himself step away. His whole body seemed to pound with the effort it took to move from her.
“Ye arms will lose feeling,” he told her, his words more brusque than he intended them to be. “Then they’re going to throb, the like of which ye’ve never felt before. Then they will start to burn. Ye may want to reconsider giving me your word, before then.” He turned to go.
“Wait!”
He turned back and lifted his brow. In this low light she almost seemed to glow, so pale and flawless was her flesh. Her lips were full and tempting beyond belief.
“My manservant. What do you intend to do with him?” she asked.
“What do ye care? He led you into danger.”
“He…has sentimental value to my family. I would rather he stay by my side.”
“So he can untie ye the moment my back is turned? What sort of fool do ye take me for, m’lady?”
Rob stalked out of the tent, his black temper roused beyond belief. He kicked the servant up off the ground where he lay shivering, to alleviate his mood.
Such scattered, inane thoughts over a pair of dark eyes and pink lips. He was addled.
* * * * *
The Chronometric Conservation Agency near-Earth satellite station. 2262 A.D.
Ursella Shun hated vampires with a carefully hidden distaste and all-encompassing prejudice that humans in bygone centuries had once held for different races and religions. Ursella Shun was the twenty-third century’s bigot.
That was why someone with a sense of ironic humor had appointed her the head of the Historical Defense Bureau, which had oversight jurisdiction of the Chronometric Conservation Agency. It was Ursella’s monthly inspection tour of the Agency and as usual she was making her tour in person.
Nayara sent Christian Hamilton to meet Shun at Halfway Station and escort her the rest of the way to the Agency. Who better to smooth Shun’s feathers and put her in a good mood than a genuine Southern gentleman who had been raised within a system of intricate bigotry and racial differentiation?
The fact that he could draw a sword, take Shun’s head off and sheath it again before she had time to open her mouth and scream probably wouldn’t even occur to Shun. Christian Lee Beauregard Jackson Hamilton knew how to pour on the charm when he needed to.
So Nayara hovered in the receiving lounge, watching the shuttle nudge its way up against the docking clamps with infinite care, and laughed at her own nervousness. The station went through this craziness every month, thanks to Shun insisting on visiting in person. They should be used to it by now. But every month they turned themselves inside out trying to placate the diminutive Shun.
The status lights over the bay doors flickered over to green. After a moment or two, the doors opened. Then Tinker, the human pilot, emerged. He gave Nayara the thumbs up and headed down the passage toward the kitchen and the tiny office he used as his quarters when he arrived at the station. He would grab a quick meal and wait to return Shun to Halfway Station.
Then Ursella Shun and Christian emerged. Christian was bending over the tiny woman, listening respectfully as she spoke. He wore all black as he always did, which made his blonde hair seem even lighter. He glanced up, a single flicker of his green eyes, spotting Nayara. He lifted his hand, silently guiding Shun over toward Nayara as Shun continued to speak.
“Director Shun,” Christian said, breaking into Shun’s monologue. “See, Ms. Ybarra is waiting for you.”
Shun frowned, looking up at Nayara. “Nayara,” she acknowledged, brushing at the long skirt of her pristine white business dress.
“I trust your journey was comfortable, Director Shun?” Nayara asked. “Christian did procure you the best seat on the beanstalk, I trust?”
Shun’s lips thinned. “You know perfectly well I get vertigo in free-fall.”
Nayara painted a smile on her face. “Of course, you are always more than welcome to take advantage of the shortest route here.”
Shun didn’t quite shudder. The quickest route to the agency involved direct contact with vampires. Flesh on flesh. Ursella would rather suffer through free-fall and twelve hours of travel than have a vampire put their arms around her. But she would never say that aloud. Instead her face grew taut and her eyes neutral. “Of course,” she said stiffly. “Is Mr. Desmond in his office?”
“Ryan is waiting for you, yes.”
“Would you like me to show you the way, Ursella?” Christian asked.
“Thank you, no,” Ursella said shortly. “I know my way from here. Thank you for your company, Mr. Hamilton.” She nodded at him and moved stiffly down the corridor toward the administration section of the station.
Christian blew out a long breath once she was out of hearing range.
Nayara rested a hand on his arm. “Thank you, Christian. What else can I say? I know what she is like, but with you, Ursella does arrive here in a more amenable mood.”
“Oh, I don’t mind soothing her for you, ma’am,” Christian replied, in his soft southern drawl. “Except I know that she’ll be in Ryan’s office for twenty seconds and he’ll have her all riled up once more. That Irish temper of his…” He shook his head.
“It’s not just Ryan,” Nayara pointed out. “Ursella isn’t always a diplomat, either.”
Christian gave her one of his slow, knowing smiles. “Ryan is the diplomat, Nayara. Why are you the one pouring all the oil on the waters?”
She couldn’t help smiling. “Want me to pull rank and tell you where to put your nosy question?”
“If you want me to escort the wonderful Ms. Shun back to Halfway, I wouldn’t if I were you.” But he wore a smile, too.
“Damn it, Christian, you have no respect for your elders,” Nayara replied.
Christian touched his hand to an invisible hat brim. “I find it hard to remember to treat you as anything but a lady when you’re so beautiful and sexy, Nayara.” He turned, heading for the living quarters. “’tis little wonder Ryan’s temper is so unstable,” he said over his shoulder. “You really should consider putting him out of his misery, you know.”
Nayara quieted the lurch of her heart Christian’s parting words caused and waited for her breathing to steady before she turned in the other direction and headed for Administration. Christian was irreverent, that was all. It didn’t mean he was accurate. He had simply been deflecting her gentle admonition back. Yes, that was it. He had been on the defensive.
Her mind and heart settled, Nayara tapped back into her messages and tasks as she walked, picking up the myriad strings of her busy day, deliberately dismissing Christian’s barb from her memory altogether.
After all, Christian was no judge. He had his own affaire de coeur troubles.
A Delectable Sampler. Four Threesome Romances from Four Threesome Series…Four Awesome Threesomes includes four first books in four of Tracy Cooper-Posey’s best selling urban fantasy and paranormal time travelling series, for you to sample the range and style of her signature MMF romances. The set includes twenty+ pages of interstitial essays by the author, giving the history of each series and how each book came to be.
Bannockburn Binding, from the Beloved Bloody Time series
Amazon Best Seller – Top 100 (#5)
#1 Amazon Time Travel Romance Bestseller
#1 Amazon Fantasy Romance Bestseller
Reviewers’ Top Pick —The Romance Reviews
Nominated Erotic Paranormal Book of the Year 2011—The Romance Reviews
Time is theirs to keep. But it comes with a price.
When Tally, vampire and time traveler, takes her client to the siege of Stirling Castle in 1314, she is caught and held hostage by Robert MacKenzie. Rob is drawn to the very different English lady. Christian, vampire, a southern gentlemen, and Tally’s ex-lover, knows the 1314 time marker well enough to jump back and help Tally return home. His arrival adds complications, for Christian is drawn to Rob MacKenzie as much as Tally is. But neither of them can stay in the past forever. To do so means certain death.
Kiss Across Time, from the Kiss Across Time series
Amazon #1 Bestseller, Vampire Romance
Amazon #1 Bestseller, Paranormal Romance
Amazon #1 Bestseller, Time Travel Romance
Night Owl Romance Reviews Reviewer’s Top Pick
A single kiss spins them across time.
Taylor wants to prove that the 6th century poet, Inigo Domhnall, actually existed. She hears Domhnall’s lyrics in a death metal song, and engineers a meeting with the singer, Brody Gallagher. When Brody kisses her, they are thrust back in time to King Arthur’s court, telling Taylor he is more than a simple rock singer. When Taylor kisses his friend and lover, Veris, they are sent back into a different time, too.
Blood Knot, from the Blood Stone series
#1 Amazon Best-Seller – Fantasy, Futuristic & Ghost Romance
Amazon Best-seller – Vampire Romance
Winner, Coffee Time Reviewer’s Recommended Award
Goodread’s “Most Drool-worthy Covers”
Erotic Vampire Book of the Year, The Romance Reviews, 2011
CAPA Nomination, Best Paranormal Book of the Year, The Romance Studio, 2011
To survive they must trust each other. Only…can they?
Winter, a professional thief who can manipulate others’ biologies by touch, accidentally “healed” her former partner—and former vampire—Sebastian, whom she secretly loves. Her healing created a bond between them that neither wants. Nathanial, a thousand-year-old vampire and Sebastian’s ex-lover, talks Sebastian and Winter into stealing evidence that will expose all vampires to the world….
Beth’s Acceptance, from the Destiny’s Trinities series
2009 CAPA Finalist for Best Erotic Paranormal Romance.
Night Owl Romance Reviewer’s Top Pick
Amazon Superhero Romance Bestseller
Amazon Vampire Romance Bestseller
Can she accept the destiny being thrust at her?
And my usual reminder; If you pre-order directly from me, you get your copy next week, not in two week’s time.
Or you can be sneaky and just wait for next week and buy it direct from me, with no pre-ordering, and still get your copy a week early.
And, of course, you can wait the extra week and get your copy from your preferred retail store.
Buy Direct From Me (and get your copy a week early)Buy from Your Preferred RetailerBy the way, this boxed set is selling at the ridiculously cheap price of 99c. 
September 15, 2022
A Samhain romance for Halloween
I’ve written a novelette for Halloween; Samhain Crossing. It’s a paranormal romance with a couple other sub-genres thrown in there. Including, if you really push the point, alternative history.
In other words, it’s a romance I wrote with zero concern about where it would properly “fit” in the market. Or even how it “should” be written.
And I really like the result.
Because this is only a novelette and not part of any of my series at all, I won’t go through the usual ramp up to release day, with the first chapter, etc. Today is the only mention I’ll make of the story until release day, on October 20th. (Just in time for Halloween, what a strange coincidence.)
HOWEVER! As usual, if you pre-order from me, you get the story a week earlier (October 13). And if you don’t want to pre-order, you can STILL buy the story from me direct, any time from October 13 onwards, and still have your story at least a week earlier than anyone else.
So here we go:
They recognize each other across twenty centuries.On the ancient Celtic feast day of Imbolc, a mysterious, but empty, box is discovered, built into a wall of a first century structure in the ruins of Carn Euny in Britain. Itching for distraction, the dig team drop a note into the box, and the next morning find an answer written in ancient Latin.
Dig director, Doctor Daria Caitini, declares the response a hoax, but when more and more letters arrive on each successive Celtic feast day, Daria finds herself drawn into corresponding with the writer, a first century druid called Cadfan, who is hunted by the Romans, and who recognizes her dedication to her work and her essential loneliness, too….
This story is part of the Short Paranormals collection.
Eva’s Last Dance
Solstice Surrender
Three Taps, Then…*
The Well of Rnomath*
Samhain Crossing
A Short, Sexy Paranormal Romance
Pre-order directly from me (and get your copy a week early)
Pre-order from your favourite retail store (and get your copy on October 6)
September 8, 2022
Threesome Awesomeness
What I feared would happen with my release schedule as a result of all the health stuff going on in my life [here, for more details] did, in fact, end up happening.
I had to move books ahead a slot. That left a yawning hole in the schedule, which I quickly realized was the perfect opportunity to release a boxed omnibus that I have been waiting to release for a while.
Four Awesome Threesomes features four first-in-series MMF romances from four different series. It also features me talking my head off about each book and each series, and how they all came into being, and why.
And it’s only 99c.
Four Awesome Threesomes is now available for pre-order — and don’t forget that if you pre-order from me, you get your copy a week earlier than anyone else. Or you can just buy from me a week earlier than you can buy it anywhere else.
A Delectable Sampler. Four Threesome Romances from Four Threesome Series…Four Awesome Threesomes includes four first books in four of Tracy Cooper-Posey’s best selling urban fantasy and paranormal time travelling series, for you to sample the range and style of her signature MMF romances. The set includes twenty+ pages of interstitial essays by the author, giving the history of each series and how each book came to be.
Bannockburn Binding, from the Beloved Bloody Time series
Amazon Best Seller – Top 100 (#5)
#1 Amazon Time Travel Romance Bestseller
#1 Amazon Fantasy Romance Bestseller
Reviewers’ Top Pick —The Romance Reviews
Nominated Erotic Paranormal Book of the Year 2011—The Romance Reviews
Time is theirs to keep. But it comes with a price.
When Tally, vampire and time traveler, takes her client to the siege of Stirling Castle in 1314, she is caught and held hostage by Robert MacKenzie. Rob is drawn to the very different English lady. Christian, vampire, a southern gentlemen, and Tally’s ex-lover, knows the 1314 time marker well enough to jump back and help Tally return home. His arrival adds complications, for Christian is drawn to Rob MacKenzie as much as Tally is. But neither of them can stay in the past forever. To do so means certain death.
Kiss Across Time, from the Kiss Across Time series
Amazon #1 Bestseller, Vampire Romance
Amazon #1 Bestseller, Paranormal Romance
Amazon #1 Bestseller, Time Travel Romance
Night Owl Romance Reviews Reviewer’s Top Pick
A single kiss spins them across time.
Taylor wants to prove that the 6th century poet, Inigo Domhnall, actually existed. She hears Domhnall’s lyrics in a death metal song, and engineers a meeting with the singer, Brody Gallagher. When Brody kisses her, they are thrust back in time to King Arthur’s court, telling Taylor he is more than a simple rock singer. When Taylor kisses his friend and lover, Veris, they are sent back into a different time, too.
Blood Knot, from the Blood Stone series
#1 Amazon Best-Seller – Fantasy, Futuristic & Ghost Romance
Amazon Best-seller – Vampire Romance
Winner, Coffee Time Reviewer’s Recommended Award
Goodread’s “Most Drool-worthy Covers”
Erotic Vampire Book of the Year, The Romance Reviews, 2011
CAPA Nomination, Best Paranormal Book of the Year, The Romance Studio, 2011
To survive they must trust each other. Only…can they?
Winter, a professional thief who can manipulate others’ biologies by touch, accidentally “healed” her former partner—and former vampire—Sebastian, whom she secretly loves. Her healing created a bond between them that neither wants. Nathanial, a thousand-year-old vampire and Sebastian’s ex-lover, talks Sebastian and Winter into stealing evidence that will expose all vampires to the world….
Beth’s Acceptance, from the Destiny’s Trinities series
2009 CAPA Finalist for Best Erotic Paranormal Romance.
Night Owl Romance Reviewer’s Top Pick
Amazon Superhero Romance Bestseller
Amazon Vampire Romance Bestseller
Can she accept the destiny being thrust at her?
For weeks, the darkly sinful Zachariah, her favourite customer at McGinty’s, has been driving Beth crazy with need. Neither can she keep the tall, mysterious Luke who haunts the stacks at her day job, out of her sweaty fantasies. Fate hands Beth a startling destiny: to bond with both of them… Can Beth accept the price the bond will ask of her?
A Vampire Time Travel MMF Romance Collection
Pre-order directly from me (and get your copy a week early)
Pre-order from your favourite retail store (and get your copy on October 6)
August 30, 2022
It’s sale time again — 20% off everything, including boxed sets, pre-orders and books already on sale
It’s the second last day of August, which means it’s time for the SRP 20% off Sale, which runs for the last two days of the month and the first two days of the next month.
This month’s coupon code is: 3VXFCNQZ
You can use the coupon when you checkout, to get 20% off your entire order. Nothing is excluded. You can throw entire series boxed sets into your basket, also books already on sale, books still on pre-order. You can add as many books as you want. You can also use the coupon as many times as you want, until the expiry date (Midnight, September 2nd, MDT).
You can also pass the coupon on to friends and other readers.
The coupon is only valid for Stories Rule Press, and only until the end of September 2nd.
Start your browsing here — this month I arranged the order of the books to show the latest releases.
Enjoy!
Tracy
August 25, 2022
I Imagine the Producers of FIREFLY Felt Like This….
In 2002, a new SF Western series came out, called Firefly — the latest Josh Whedon offering. However, despite the big name show runner behind it, Firefly only lastest one season, before being pulled.
But the fans weren’t ready to call it quits, yet. They emails, wrote, and did a lot of screaming on line. They organized and rallied and raised a whole lot of money to give to Whedon to encourage him to keep the series going.
A movie that wrapped up all the storylines, Serenity, was made as a result of fan action, and partially funded by their donations.
That’s the power of fans.
I’ve experienced the same sort of thing–although on a greatly reduced scale!–regarding the Endurance series.
If you’re new to my email list, and my books, you might not be aware of this series. It is a science fiction romance series that I started in 2015, with the release of the prequel introduction, 5,001 (which is actually set much farther into the series). In 2016 I published book 1, Greyson’s Doom.
I really enjoyed writing the series, and quickly put out books, until Skinwalker’s Bane in 2017.
By then, I could measure by sales that interest in the series had faded. If I was to spend the weeks necessary to write more books, I would not earn back the time I had spent via sales.
So I quietly retired the series.
Then the emails started to come in. Plus questions in reviews. Comments on Social Media.
When was I going to release the next book?
I had a few conversations with street team readers, who expressed how much they loved this series and really wanted to find out how the passengers aboard The Endurance fared. They wanted the end of the series.
I continued to get emails and comments, asking about the end of the series.
For years. Very much in the style of Firefly.
So in January of this year, I resurrected the series, and wrote the next book: Mongrels United. I admit that it was purely an experiment because the only true measure of how a book is really received by readers is sales.
Sales for Mongrels United weren’t world-staggering, but they were decent enough that I could stretch and say that another book would be justified.
And that book is on my writing scheduled (delayed a bit by my broken back).
But in the meantime, I grouped together the first bunch of stories into a collection, as many of you like the savings to be made from buying a boxed set, and many more of you like the uninterrupted binge reading you get with a boxed set.
The Endurance Box One was released this morning, at all bookstores.
The first four science fiction romances in a unique series, collected together.
GREYSON’S DOOM
The AI declares Greyson is going to die and he must train his replacement.
Captain Greyson Durant has been in the job for three months, the youngest captain to ever lead the Endurance, when he is assigned to mentor the even younger Emmaline Victore, who resents the disruption to her life and Grey, too…but the longevity of the Endurance depends on them finding a way to work together.
YESTERDAY’S LEGACY
Only Jonah has the potential to save the Endurance.
Tightening food rations, cramped living quarters, unhappy and frustrated citizens. Life on the Endurance is unravelling fast. It is Marlow Fitzgerald’s job to maintain peace, including containing trouble-makers like Jonah Solomon, the radical thinker and society drop-out who just might be able to save the ship…if only she could believe him.
PROMISSORY NOTE
They can change life aboard the Endurance, if only they can work together.
Thanks to a small disaster aboard the Endurance, popular, beautiful and adored Laura Hyland is unable to meet the terms of a promissory note she wrote. The note has been signed over to the horrible Micah Thorn, an elite coder with a dark reputation and no social skills. The note ties Laura to Thorn and forces her to work with him. When she digs into his personal history, though, his work takes on a far deeper meaning…and could change everyone’s life for the better.
QUIVER AND CRAVE
He broke her heart. Tankball made her whole again.
Quiver Sheenan is the most talented topman the Endurance has ever seen. Despite her incredible abilities in zero gravity, she’d rather have a career in the sciences than play for the Dreamhawks while Kallon Crave is their captain.
These are the first four stories of the science fiction romance series readers are calling gripping, superb and fantastic. Written by award-winning SFR author Tracy Cooper-Posey, it is set aboard the marathon-class vessel Endurance, a generation ship a thousand years from its destination. If you like the smart, romantic SF of authors like Linnea Sinclair and Anna Hackett, you will love the Endurance series.__
This boxed set is part of The Endurance SFR series:
0.5 5,001
1.0 Greyson’s Doom
2.0 Yesterday’s Legacy
3.0 Promissory Note
3.1 Quiver and Crave
4.0 Xenogenesis
5.0 Junkyard Heroes
5.1 Evangeliya
6.0 Skinwalker’s Bane
7.0 Mongrels United…and more to come!
A Science Fiction Romance Boxed Set.
__
Praise for The Endurance series:
To all SF fans out there, I highly recommend this be on your reading list. To the author, PLEASE keep giving us these amazing stories.
I cannot wait to read more in this series and learn more about the people that live on the Endurance as it travels through space.
Thank you once again, Tracy Cooper-Posey, for a fun ride!
OMG, I love the Endurance stories!
Even if you think you won’t like sci-fi you will enjoy this book, the whole series. Love found, lost and found again. This series is one of the best I have ever read.
I’ve been following the entire Endurance series and love them all!
Enjoy the read!!
August 18, 2022
Damage Control
I’ve been having a few health challenges lately.
I’ve kept the Facebook Hangout readers and everyone who has elected to receive BookFunnel emails sort-of up to date, but I’ve had even more news lately, and thought it was time to put it all into one post and bring everyone up to date.
I’ve murmured once or twice over the last year or so about pinched nerves and back issues, in particular, my neck, which was giving me a lot of grief. On The Productive Indie Fiction Writer, I reported even more fully on the condition, which is a common one for office workers and writers like me who spend hours a day in a chair staring at a screen. [And if you spend your day at a desk, I strongly urge you to read it.]
But in May, things took an interesting turn, when I literally fell off a shovel and broke my forearm. I reported on that here. At the time I figured I was just going through a crappy run of luck, health-wise.
I finally got rid of the splint and had the use of my arm back, then my back started misbehaving.
More pinched nerves, more pain-killers, more out-of-it days. Chiropractor appointments. On and on.
I spent most of my days stretched out on our recliner, working as much as I could on the laptop, trying to keep up with deadlines and posts and emails.
I stopped going to the chiropractor because it hurt more after visiting him.
Instead, I researched the best exercises to rehab pinched nerves and forced myself to move more–particularly gardening and housework–to try to rehab my back and get back to normal.
It was taking way too long, I was still heavily relying on pain killers, and I fretted for Mark was doing most of the heavy lifting around the house.
A Diagnosis, At Last
Photo by Jackson Simmer on UnsplashFinally, I got a doctor’s appointment, which led directly to x-rays and a diagnosis.
The pinched nerves I thought I was dealing with were actually four fractured vertebrae and a fractured rib.
In other words, I have a broken back. (Not something I *ever* thought I’d say out loud and actually mean it.)
It was a relief to know what’s going on, because for weeks I’ve felt like I was being a gutless wonder because a couple of pinched nerves were keeping me chair-bound. I kept thinking that I was pathetic for not handling the pain better, when people with pinched nerves got up and got going after a few days and I couldn’t seem to.
For the next week I was on prescription pain killers, that let me sleep through the night (heavenly!), but also wiped me out during the day. So I’ve been getting steadily further behind on books, on conversations and more.
But for that week, I stopped trying to push myself to move, to do things. Mostly because I was too out of it to focus, but also because I was now deathly afraid of hurting myself even more.
I’m no longer using drugs because the prescriptions were for a week, for highly addictive pain killers, plus everything I take increases my blood pressure. Now I’m drug-free. But it’s taking a lot of energy just staying upright and moving around. On the positive side, I can think, at last. My mind is clear. And I’m starting to feel a but more enthusiastic about working.
The weekend just gone was a challenge, as I was scheduled to speak on four panels at the When Words Collide conference. I got through it, but Saturday was the tough one, as I had two panels back to back, and had to sit in the upright chair at my desk because that’s where the webcam is. I was very glad to get up off that chair afterwards! But I couldn’t have attended the conference if it had been live, so there’s that.
The Latest Developments
Photo by Markus Winkler on UnsplashYesterday (from my perspective, writing this), I had a bone densitometry test, and that was very interesting indeed.
There are three “stages” of bone density: Normal, Osteoporosis, and a phase in between called osteopenia. This is when a bone density scan shows you have lower bone density than the average for your age, but not low enough to be classed as osteoporosis.
I am in the osteopenia stage, which shocked the hell out of me.
I had fully expected to be at the extreme end of the osteoporosis stage, because in between the x-rays and the bone density scan, I had learned some sobering facts.
Osteoporosis runs in our family. My mother had a compression fracture in her back five years ago, and it hasn’t properly healed. And my daughter had a compression fracture in her back just last year. She’s only a bit past 30 years old.
The other thing I learned was even more scary.
I followed a ketogenic diet for years because research (and some very good copywriting) convinced me it was the diet for weight loss and health. I also have a history of seizures (which stopped when I learned I’m allergic to alcohol) and the keto diet was first developed to control seizures in children. So I was sold on the diet.
I stopped the keto diet in 2018.
In the week between the x-rays and the bone density scan, I tripped over a scientific paper and two popular science reports referring to a study in Australia, all of them published in 2019, that indicates that the ketogenic diet, animal products and, in particular, dairy products, saps the calcium from your bones. In other words, it brings on osteoporosis.
So I went into the bone density scan, fully expecting to hear that my osteoporosis was so bad that just sneezing would risk fractures.
Instead, I learned I was only (“only”) in the osteopenia stage. My hips are right in the mid-range of the mid-stage, while my spine is closer to the border between osteopenia and osteoporosis.
The technician gave me some crucial insights while the scan was happening, including a very interesting observation that compression fractures in the spine can take up to a year to properly heal, because there’s no way to immobilize the spine. Which makes sense, in hindsight. She also said that compression fractures are funny things—sometimes you can go weeks before you realize there is an issue.
All the research I’d done suggested that compression fractures of the vertebrae heal in 4 to 6 weeks. Which meant I couldn’t put a finger on why the fractures happened in the first place (except that perhaps, the chiropractor did it – in the drawing room with the candlestick).
Onto Pure Speculation (for now)
Photo by Juan Rumimpunu on UnsplashIf compression fractures take up to a year to heal, and if I don’t have full-on osteoporosis, then that means that the probable reason for the fractures was when I fell off the shovel and broke my arm.
They only x-rayed my arm at the ER, then put it in a splint. So if I had fractures from the fall, they were easily overlooked, because the only pain I was feeling was in my arm. (And even that wasn’t much, as long as I didn’t move it).
I remember lying on the ground after the fall and feeling numb all over for a minute and wondering if I’d paralyzed myself. But I could sit and move fine, after that, so figured I’d got away with just the broken arm.
It’s possible I’ll never know for sure how this happened.
At the end of this week, I’ll be doing a full bone scan from top to toe, to find out if there are any other issues. There might be further insight from that.
But I already know enough to know I have to swing into recovery and rehab. Most of the literature says that there’s no way to “cure” osteoporosis or osteopenia, but there are some alternative sources that suggest that diet, weight-bearing exercise (especially walking), and carefully selected supplements will help rebuild bones.
I have nothing to lose by trying.
Mark and I are rejigging our daily routine to incorporate a mile walk every morning after breakfast. Which doesn’t sound like much, but I find it incredibly challenging right now. Actually, it freakin’ hurts, but I huff and puff through it, because every single resource tells me walking is the best thing I can do for myself right now.
When my back is fully healed, I’ll get back into some gentle yoga, too.
We were already eating the best diet possible. We switched to an oil-free plant-based diet a year ago. Now we just have to tweak it to increase calcium rich foods and the one natural food with Vitamin D in it: mushrooms (which I love). The rest of my Vitamin D will have to come from a supplement as living in Canada means acquiring enough via the sun is next to impossible.
Also, I’m into full-on Damage Control
Photo by Nate Isaac on UnsplashOne of the reasons I’m boring you with my health woes is because I’ve had a lot of time off lately, and my book release schedule is suffering. This week I failed to keep up with posts and emails, too (although the Hangout guys were very understanding about that – thanks, everyone!).
I’m slowly easing my way back to a normal schedule. I can sit at my desk for longer and longer each day, before my head, neck or back starts shrieking, and then I head for the recliner and the laptop.
In the next few days/weeks, I’ll be able to figure out how much work I can reliably complete each day, then I’ll have to address the production schedule (that is, the books I plan to write, and their release dates), and most likely adjust it.
That means there might be a short hiatus toward the end of the year (because I write that far ahead) when no books are released, to give me a chance to catch up.
If you’ve emailed me, or posted a comment, and I’ve failed to respond, know that it’s not because I’ve been ignoring you. It’s likely I just failed to see it. Things have been a bit slippery and, well, fractured around here, lately.
Feel free to tap my shoulder and draw my attention to your original communication. I’m just starting to dig into my enormous backlog of writing, emails, posts, etc., etc., so I will make sure I address yours.
August 11, 2022
Chapter One from the new SFR boxed set
The first Endurance boxed set is released in two week’s time (or next Thursday, if you pre-order or buy directly from me).
That means it’s time for the first chapter.
In this instance, that means the first chapter from Greyson’s Doom.
Let’s go!
EXCERPT FROM THE ENDURANCE BOX ONE BY TRACY COOPER-POSEY
COPYRIGHT (C) 2022
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
Endurance Year 210
In the three months Grey had been captain of the Endurance, he had never seen Yuli genuinely upset, until now.
His chief of staff sat carefully in the empty seat next to Grey, moving like he’d taken a blow between the legs. It pulled Grey’s attention away from the game. The Dream Hawks were losing three-zero, anyway.
A scream went up, the siren blew and people pummeled on the side of the tank in ferocious delight.
Make that four-zero.
Grey looked at Yuli expectantly. The older man would spit it out sooner or later.
Yuli took his time. He stared at Grey, his gaze flickering over him as if he was measuring him up. It had been a while since Yuli had given him that assessing glance.
“What is it?” Grey asked. He kept his voice down. Everyone in the chairs around them were Bridge people—yet something that made Yuli look like he did was probably best kept between the two of them.
Yuli shook his head. “I…there was a message. From the head of Accouchement.”
Grey was delighted. “You’ve been assigned a child?” he asked. “But that’s wonderful!” At the same time, he was puzzled, too. Why did Yuli look as though this was a death sentence? He was only eighty. He had at least another forty years of active life. That was plenty of time to rear a child to Emergence.
Yuli shook his head. “The Vocation division.”
“You’ve been asked to mentor someone? It’s still good news,” Greyson pointed out.
“Not me, Captain,” Yuli said, his voice low. “You.”
Grey had wagered with Paulie Duke, his chief aide, on the outcome of the game and now the Hawks were being thrashed by the Bullets, the three bottles of classic Palatine cabernet he’d wagered were at sharp risk. Despite that, the outcome of the game and the game itself lost all its allure, between one heartbeat and the next.
Grey stared at Yuli. “Me?” he repeated. “But…that’s…impossible.”
Yuli shook his head, a small movement designed not to draw the attention of anyone around them. “I checked. That’s why the Accouchement Master spoke to me directly. He confirmed it. You’ve been assigned to mentor your replacement.”
Grey’s heart started to hammer. “There has to be a mistake,” he said, trying to keep his voice down. “I’ve had the job for three months.” He looked around. Everyone was still watching the game. “There’s only one captain on the Endurance, Yuli. If I’ve been assigned a child to mentor, it means the AI—the algorithms—think I’m going to need a replacement somewhere within six to ten years.”
“I’ve been through all this with the Master,” Yuli said quietly.
“No, you don’t get it!” Grey hissed furiously. “If you are asked to mentor a child, it merely means there is a replacement needed for personnel on the Bridge. It could be anyone. But there’s only one of me. If I have to train a replacement, it means I’m going to die in the next decade!”
Yuli nodded. There was a calmness about his lined features and faded blue eyes that said he had already accepted this.
But Grey wasn’t ready to accept it at all. “I’m twenty-two years old, Yuli! You’re telling me I’m going to die before I’m thirty-two?”
“You know how it works, sir,” Yuli said gently. “It’s based on sociology and statistics. Mistakes can be made.”
“When was the last time you remember a mistake like that being made? When was the last time a profession was overstaffed?”
Silence.
Grey could feel sweat prickling his back and his neck yet he was icy cold and his fingers were chilled. “Who is it?” he made himself ask. “Who is to be my doom-bringer?”
Yuli sighed. “Emmaline Victore.”
Grey searched through all the children he knew of about the right age. “Odd. I don’t know which child she is. I thought I had met all of them at least once.”
“You have,” Yuli said dryly. “She is the daughter of Anat Vicario and Jakub Emmetore. They’re both engineers.”
It still didn’t provide a memory of the girl. “Capitol district?” he asked, trying to narrow it down.
“Esquiline, actually,” Yuli replied. “Anat Vicario is a master.”
Grey shrugged. “There are dozens of masters in Engineering.”
“There are over a thousand engineers,” Yuli pointed out. “But Anat Vicario is one of the better ones, apparently. Anyway, I can have files pulled up, a profile of the girl—”
“Wait.” The mention of the Esquilino district had stirred a memory, an older one from when he had been a child himself. “Dark brown hair. Blue eyes. Skinny. She wears her hair in pigtails most of the time.” Grey had seen the child in the Aventine, her hand in her father’s as they shopped. Her father was a very big man, both in width and height. Grey recalled a pair of very large, dark blue eyes in a fragile face, eyes wide with fear, before she had ducked behind her father for shelter.
“That does sound like her,” Yuli said in agreement.
“She is to be our next captain?” Grey said, astonished. He wanted to protest once more that a mistake had been made. The child he remembered was so shy she couldn’t meet the eyes of another child. She was to be the supreme leader of the Endurance?
But he was bound by his own logic. The AIs that controlled quickening, accouchement and vocational assignments had not made a major mistake as far back as Grey could remember, which was only twenty-two years. Although even Yuli could not remember an error in assignments and he was considerably older.
It meant Emmaline Victore was to be the next captain and Grey’s own captaincy would become one of the shortest in the history of the Endurance.
Grey turned back to face the tank and pretended to watch the dismal game, his mind circling around the unpalatable fact of an early death, trying to adjust to it and failing miserably.
* * * * *
Emmie didn’t hear her parents’ suddenly loud voices at first. She was putting the final touches to a recipe for a different sort of silk, a softer kind. She was impatient to get it done and printed so she could see how it felt against her fingers. Already, her mind was conjuring up garment ideas that would work better with a softer silk. Shirts. Underwear…it was the most intriguing possibility even though it wasn’t something she could discuss even with her father. A scarf for her hair, perhaps. If the color was just right her mother could use it on the few occasions when she wore something other than her work clothes.
Her father’s hand on Emmie’s shoulder was unexpected and made her jump. She looked up, her heart racing.
“You didn’t even hear us, did you, Emmie-hun?” Jakub’s smile said he wasn’t upset about it, just amused.
She frowned, thinking back. “Sort of,” she confessed. “I was busy, sorry.”
“Take a break for a moment, Emm. Come on. We have news.”
“And chocolate,” her mother called out from the main room.
“I guess,” Emmie said with a small sigh.
“What were you doing, anyway?” Jakub asked curiously, dropping his voice so her mother wouldn’t hear. He didn’t look at the screen, even though she had it in privacy mode. It didn’t even occur to her he would try to look. He never had.
Because he had never tried to look, Emmie told him the truth. “A pattern variation on silk. I think it might actually work, this time.”
He glanced over his shoulder toward the door. He was a big man—big in size, height and also in heart. Despite that, her mother had him completely under her thumb. Emmie knew it as thoroughly as he did.
“As far as your mother gets to know, you’ve been working on the trigonometry problems due tomorrow, okay?” he told her softly.
“Okay.”
“Which you’re going to do first thing tomorrow morning, okay?”
She grinned. “Okay,” she repeated. Both of them knew she could finish them before breakfast if she really wanted to. She just didn’t really want to, most times. It was boring.
“Come on. Your mother is bursting to tell you.” He held out his hand.
Emmie let him pull her out of the chair and take her out to the main room.
She had always lived here, ever since she could remember. It was one of the bigger apartments in the better section of the Esquiline district. Her mother had explained that because of her job as a master engineer and because they had her, Emmie, they had been assigned bigger living quarters. Also because they had Emmie, the bigger quarters didn’t stir the resentment of others who lived in more cramped conditions. Emmie avoided mentioning the number of rooms they had when such conversations arose, which wasn’t often. There were only three other children around her age in the Esquiline and she didn’t get to meet them very often. Besides, they probably lived in bigger quarters, too.
The room was comfortable, with soft couches and muted, warm colors on the walls and fascia. The only bright light was over the counter where her mother was stirring mugs of hot chocolate. She looked up and smiled at Emmie and pushed two of the cups toward them.
Anat Vicario was a tall woman, slender and with red hair that Emmie had noticed had lost its burnished sheen in the last few years. There were wrinkles at the corners of her eyes, too. But her eyes were sharp with intelligence and had never changed.
Emmie sipped. Chocolate was a very rare treat. “What’s the occasion?” she asked.
Her mother glanced at Jakub, a soft smile just lifting the corners of her mouth. “Do you want to tell her?”
Emmie turned to look at him.
He was smiling, too. “You’ve been assigned a mentor, Emm.”
“Really? Already?” She put her cup down, barely noticing where she placed it. She had been waiting for this moment for nearly a year now, wondering what profession would be hers. All her research had told her professions were assigned according to skills and talents and inclinations, which had left her confused. She was good at everything she tried. All her assignments and projects had been less than challenging, unlike Yosef Reuter, one of the other children in the district, who struggled with everything. He was destined to be a basic engineer. Everyone could see it without the AI assignment to confirm it.
But when it came to her, Emmie couldn’t predict where she would end up. It wasn’t as though she was good with numbers and terrible at text, which would narrow the field.
Too, everything she had read about profession assignments emphasized that aptitude and temperament also affected the assignment.
It was where she usually gave up trying to predict what her assignment would be, because her inclination was toward something that wasn’t a profession. So how would the AI resolve that? Was it smart enough to know what was in her mind and heart? Sometimes it seemed that way. It had been smart enough to give her Jakub and Anat as parents. She couldn’t imagine growing up with anyone else.
Emmie had gotten to the point where she refused to think about it anymore. The Second Assessment phase was six months away and assignments were usually made after the assessment, so she had deliberately put the subject aside whenever it rose in her thoughts.
Now the assignment had been made and earlier than expected.
“I thought assignments didn’t happen until the end of my fourteenth year, after the Second Assessments are done,” she said.
“Apparently those are just guidelines,” her mother said. “I asked them about that, too. The AI can assign mentors at any time and it sometimes happens a bit early if the child is a clear fit.”
“I’m a clear fit for something?” Emmie asked, astonished. “Who is my mentor?”
Anat’s smile lit up her face. She glanced at Jakub again, glowing with some emotion Emmie couldn’t quite identify. It was as if a whole slew of feelings were welling up inside her mother, all of them showing on her face, which was unusual enough to make Emmie’s heart squeeze in surprise.
“You’ve been assigned to Captain Durant,” her mother said softly.
Emmie stared at her, trying to understand. “The Captain?” She repeated it blankly. Had she misheard? Maybe she didn’t understand exactly what it meant. Maybe it worked differently if the captain of the ship was the mentor. Maybe it didn’t mean what it seemed to, because that was impossible, that meant—
“You’re going to be captain of the ship one day, Emm,” Jakub said, behind her. His voice was thick with feeling. Emmie had no problem identifying that one. Pride. She didn’t even have to look at him to make sure.
She strung her fingers together and squeezed them. “Captain…” she repeated, tasting it. “It doesn’t make sense,” she added slowly.
“Of course it does!” Anat replied firmly. “You’re smarter than us. You skip through your lessons—don’t think I don’t know you dash them off at the last possible moment because you’re busy doing other things. You see big patterns, Emmie. You see the shape of something that isn’t there yet, like you did with the jacket you made for me, the one all my friends were asking about. You think just anyone could have done that?”
Emmie stared at her, surprised at her fierceness. “But…being Captain…that means talking to people. Telling them what to do.”
“It’s just a tiny part of the job, honey,” Jakub said quickly. “Your mother is right. It’s a systems thing. You can see the whole shape of things in your head, as if you were floating up near the roof and looking down.”
“So can Ma,” Emmie said shortly. “She’s not the captain, though.”
“For good reason,” Anat said shortly. “I’m only good with electronics and circuits.”
“You make furniture,” Emmie pointed out. “That’s patterns.”
“It’s making something from a pattern someone else has thought up,” Anat said gently. “It’s not the same thing. You see the shape of anything, especially people.”
Emmie shrank into herself. “I don’t,” she said quickly. “I can’t talk to them the way Da does.”
“Honey, don’t you understand? This is the best news ever,” Jakub said. “You’re going to be the captain. You couldn’t ask for a better job.”
Emmie swallowed and looked at her mother. “Can I ask for a different one?”
Anat laughed. “There’s only one captain, Emmie.”
“I don’t want to be the captain.” As soon as she said it, it all came together in her mind, laid out clearly. Perhaps this was even what her mother meant about seeing everything. She didn’t know about that. This, though, she understood. The captain spent his time directing the whole ship. Deciding on policy and future direction. Resolving major issues that divided the Endurance—like the issue over how many tankball teams were too many, which the previous captain, Romilda Kermode, had considered and then agreed one more team would be allowed on a trial basis. That issue had been causing fights to break out on the ship until Captain Kermode had made her decision and announced it in front of everyone at the arena in the Aventine, while people screamed and argued with each other.
Once she had made her announcement, peace had returned almost at once.
Emmie tried to imagine standing in front of a hostile crowd like that, with the peace of the ship hinging on what she said, aloud and for others to obey….
Her mind blanked out.
“I won’t do it,” she said softly.
“Emm, I don’t think you understand—” Jakub began.
“No! I don’t want to be captain!” Emmie wrapped her arms around herself, suddenly chilled. “Tell them to get someone else.” She hurried away, heading for her room, before either of them tried to talk her out of it, because this time, they couldn’t.
She would not do it. She couldn’t. It was that simple.
“Emmaline!” Anat called out, with the iron in her voice that told Emmie she’d better listen.
She stopped at the door and half-turned to show she was paying attention.
“Think about it for a few days,” Anat said gently. “Let yourself get used to the idea. You’re supposed to meet with Captain Durant next week, so you can get to know each other. After, we can talk.”
Emmie gripped the edge of the door, digging her fingers in. “He’ll hate me,” she said heavily.
“You’re being dramatic,” Jakub chided her.
She looked at him, surprised. “No, I’m not,” she said slowly. “Captain Durant just got the job a few months ago, when Captain Kermode died. She was nearly a hundred and twenty when she died and everyone knew her time was coming. Captain Durant is not much older than me and now he’s been assigned to train his replacement. You really think he’s going to like training someone when it means he’ll be dead in a few years’ time?”
Both of them looked surprised, as if they were considering this for the first time.
Emmie went back to her room and pulled up the screen once more. Silk was a safe subject to think about. She even had a color in mind. The dark blue the same as the painting her father had finished yesterday. The blue of a sky no one on the Endurance had ever seen. She could even design a garment and print it, if it wasn’t very big. Perhaps she would wear it when she met Captain Durant next week.
…and realized she was back to thinking about the captain, anyway.
What was going to happen to him? Did he know, already? Was it hovering over him like a black cloud?
Oh, how he would resent her!
The first four science fiction romances in a unique series, collected together.
GREYSON’S DOOM
The AI declares Greyson is going to die and he must train his replacement.
Captain Greyson Durant has been in the job for three months, the youngest captain to ever lead the Endurance, when he is assigned to mentor the even younger Emmaline Victore, who resents the disruption to her life and Grey, too…but the longevity of the Endurance depends on them finding a way to work together.
YESTERDAY’S LEGACY
Only Jonah has the potential to save the Endurance.
Tightening food rations, cramped living quarters, unhappy and frustrated citizens. Life on the Endurance is unravelling fast. It is Marlow Fitzgerald’s job to maintain peace, including containing trouble-makers like Jonah Solomon, the radical thinker and society drop-out who just might be able to save the ship…if only she could believe him.
PROMISSORY NOTE
They can change life aboard the Endurance, if only they can work together.
Thanks to a small disaster aboard the Endurance, popular, beautiful and adored Laura Hyland is unable to meet the terms of a promissory note she wrote. The note has been signed over to the horrible Micah Thorn, an elite coder with a dark reputation and no social skills. The note ties Laura to Thorn and forces her to work with him. When she digs into his personal history, though, his work takes on a far deeper meaning…and could change everyone’s life for the better.
QUIVER AND CRAVE
He broke her heart. Tankball made her whole again.
Quiver Sheenan is the most talented topman the Endurance has ever seen. Despite her incredible abilities in zero gravity, she’d rather have a career in the sciences than play for the Dreamhawks while Kallon Crave is their captain.
These are the first four stories of the science fiction romance series readers are calling gripping, superb and fantastic. Written by award-winning SFR author Tracy Cooper-Posey, it is set aboard the marathon-class vessel Endurance, a generation ship a thousand years from its destination. If you like the smart, romantic SF of authors like Linnea Sinclair and Anna Hackett, you will love the Endurance series.__
This boxed set is part of The Endurance SFR series:
0.5 5,001
1.0 Greyson’s Doom
2.0 Yesterday’s Legacy
3.0 Promissory Note
3.1 Quiver and Crave
4.0 Xenogenesis
5.0 Junkyard Heroes
5.1 Evangeliya
6.0 Skinwalker’s Bane
7.0 Mongrels United…and more to come!
A Science Fiction Romance Boxed Set.
__
Praise for The Endurance series:
To all SF fans out there, I highly recommend this be on your reading list. To the author, PLEASE keep giving us these amazing stories.
I cannot wait to read more in this series and learn more about the people that live on the Endurance as it travels through space.
Thank you once again, Tracy Cooper-Posey, for a fun ride!
OMG, I love the Endurance stories!
Even if you think you won’t like sci-fi you will enjoy this book, the whole series. Love found, lost and found again. This series is one of the best I have ever read.
I’ve been following the entire Endurance series and love them all!
The Endurance Box One will be released on August 25 at all retail bookstores, and on August 18th on Stories Rule Press, which is next week. You can pre-order now, or buy your copy next week…or wait until the 25th if you prefer to buy from a different retailer.
Buy direct from me (and get your copy next week)Buy from your preferred retail store (and get your copy on the 25th)Cheers,
August 3, 2022
King Arthur Didn’t Exist. Or He Did. Or He *Might* Have…
Tintagel, Cornwall. Legend says that Arthur was born here. Or perhaps merely conceived here…. The ruins on the narrow thrust of land date to the right century, but no experts can confirm Tintagel’s connection to Arthur despite nearly every “historian” mentioning the fortress.I got an email the other day from a reader about the Once and Future Hearts series. She said, in part:
Wow, I’m really blown away by all the research you’ve done!
I scrambled to quickly correct her impression. Here’s a filled out version of my answer to her about my research for the series.
In fact, I’ve done very little true research for the series, for a very good reason: There are no historical records of the period.
If there was a King Arthur (no expert can agree on this), then it’s likely he existed in the late fifth to early sixth centuries CE — just before the Anglo Saxons invaded Britain and made it England.
No factual records exist from that time period that deal with the history of the Celtic tribes in Britain. None.
That is why they called it the Dark Ages.
Welcome to the Dark AgesAlthough now, that title is considered prejudicial and the preferred label is “Sub-Roman Britain”– the period between the departure of the Roman legions, and the final, permanent mass invasion of the Anglo-Saxons.
There are two possible reasons for the lack of records for that time. Or maybe three.
1. The Celts didn’t have a written languageCeltic culture at the time was complex and fascinating. The languages they spoke were nuanced and flexible. But they didn’t have an alphabet. Nothing was written down. The druids, who were the academic professors of the age, spent years memorizing generations worth of knowledge.
When the Celts really felt the need to record their thoughts, they would use Greek or Latin. But that required a high degree of scholarship and skill, so it’s likely that not nearly as much about Celtic life was written down as, say, the Romans of the same period. Everyone in Rome with a small education was able to write…and often did.
The Anglo-Saxons, on the other hand, did have a written language and did keep records, and that is why historical records exist after the mid-sixth century–because they made them.
2. The Anglo-Saxons Conquered BritainConquerors were not kind to their defeated enemies, not because they were inherently cruel, but because they needed to hold the land they had just won through mortal combat. Holding lands, maintaining their claim over them, often required removing all evidence of the previous land-owners to ensure they wouldn’t be tempted to return.
Burning and destroying property was common. Scattering the defeated people, so they were forced to live in the extreme fringes of the new land-owners’ domains was also standard operating procedure.
Where Celtic-based languages are spoken in Britain and Europe, today. You can see where the invading Anglo-Saxons pushed the Celts to the south, west, and north, leaving what is officially “England” for themselves (the grey section of the British Isles in the illustration)In fact, if you look at a map of modern Britain today, you will see this is exactly what the Anglo-Saxons did. They drove the Celts southwest and north–into what would become the far west of Cornwall, Wales and Scotland, and overseas to Ireland. And these three countries in the United Kingdom all speak a version of the original Celtic — Welsh, Gaelic and Irish. Even Cornwall has a local language, Cornish, which has Celtic roots. (And in Brittany, which was Lesser Britain in Arthur’s time, the Breton they speak has the same roots, as the Anglo-Saxons never conquered Lesser Britain.)
As conquerors remove all traces of the previous land-owners, if the Celts had historical records at all, written in Greek or Latin, then they were likely destroyed by the Anglo-Saxons.
3. Time Destroyed Whatever Records Did ExistThe third reasons why the Dark Ages are so dark could simply be time itself.
We look at the Edwardian Era (just before World War One) and think how quaint it was–women still in corsets and big hats, and cars a new innovation, women still didn’t have the vote, and child mortality rates still alarmingly high.
And that was only 100 years ago!
More than fourteen times as many years have passed since King Arthur ruled the land.
If the Celts had got around to recording their history, there’s a good chance that if the Anglo-Saxons didn’t burn and destroy it all, time itself could have done the deed.
The reason that so many Ancient Egyptian papyrus records still exist is because the climate in and around Egypt is hot and very, very dry. The dryness preserved many of the original records of the pharaohs.
Britain, on the other hand, is damp and cold. Any records made on papyrus would have succumbed to the dampness.
Too, in King Arthur’s time, papyrus scrolls were slowly being replaced by parchment scrolls and later, codex (books). The technology involved in producing parchment was in its infancy, and many of the oldest parchment scrolls simply didn’t last.
So Why Do We Think There Was An Arthur?There are a handful of sources that Arthurian scholars consult. All of them were written after King Arthur might have existed.
Gildas was an English (i.e. Anglo-Saxon) monk who wrote On the Ruin of Britain in the sixth century, which makes him the closest to being Arthur’s contemporary.
The hyperbole in Gildas’ book makes it clear that he isn’t writing a history, but rather a polemic essay chastising Britain’s kings for their shortcomings. He makes no mention of King Arthur (but there is historical evidence that the ruler of the time killed Gildas’ older brother, so…) but he does mention Ambrosius Aurelius, who (Gildas said) ruled approximately a generation before the Battle of Mount Badon. Gildas also reported on the Battle of Mount Badon itself, and historians have deduced from his references that the date of the battle was 493.
The Venerable Bede was also an English monk, active in the eighth century. He wrote The Ecclesiastical History of the English People, and unlike Gildas, he clearly intended his book to be a history. Historians feel that his work is more accurate than any of the other sources from that century, but there are still gaping omissions and errors. Neither does Bede mention King Arthur. He does speak of Vortigern. Bede relied heavily on Gildas’ work, though, which perpetuated the original errors.
Then there is the early 9th-century Historia Brittonum (“The History of the Britons”), attributed to Nennius, a Welsh cleric. He is the first source to speak of Arthur, and said he fought at the Battle of Mount Badon. But he did not say he was the ruler of the Celts.
Then there is the wildly inaccurate “history” written by Geoffrey of Monmouth in the eleventh century, called The History of the Kings of Britain.
King Arthur is alive and well in Geoffrey’s work, which is far more fiction than it is fact. But Geoffrey laid down the original structure of the Arthurian mythology. As he was pulling from both Gildas and Bede, Vortigern became the ruin of Britain, the Saxon-lover. Ambrosius became Merlin’s father, and brother to Uther, who would sire Arthur.
Geoffrey was a run-away best-seller. His book was translated into all the popular languages of the time, copied endlessly, and read and re-read. He wrote sensational stories about Arthur that readers loved.
Up until the sixteenth century, Geoffrey’s work was considered an accurate history of Britain. Therefore, the “bones” of the Arthurian cycle of stories were taken as fact.
Later authors embroidered upon the mythology and in the fourteenth century, King Arthur reached new heights in interest and fame, with dozens of stories and characters being added to the myth, including Lancelot and Guenivere, Bedivere, etc. The Round Table and the Sword in the Stone were introduced around this time.
This medieval explosion in popularity is the reason why many modern versions of King Arthur stories show “knights” and “Sir Kay” (instead of simply “Cai of xxx”), plate armor and a huge emphasis on 1) Christian values (which Guenivere’s downfall was meant to underline, and the Grail stories to highlight) and 2) knightly codes of ethics, including jousting and dueling, rescuing fair maidens and so forth.
By this point, Arthur and his doings had become pure myth, a hodge-podge of stories taken from English and Welsh sources, mixed up together to make a pleasing whole. It was a pervasive myth that has stuck around until modern times.
Then There’s My Version.
I planned my series based upon the very few dates and facts that are known about the sub-Roman period, including one date in particular: The Battle of Mount Badon, which has been mentioned multiple times by historians throughout history, and the date has been pretty much confirmed. That date is what I built the rest of the series around.
There was both a kingdom of Dyfed and a kingdom of Brycheiniog, too.
I have done a great deal of reading about the state of Britain in the late fifth and early sixth century, but everyone writing about that period is using the same handful of historical records, and the extrapolations from archeology. No one knows anything for certain.
I’ve even got a book on hold at the library that proposes that King Arthur did exist (even that’s not been established for sure and the current thinking is that he’s probably purely myth) and that he was a Scot and ruled Britain from somewhere up near where Inverness would be established a few centuries later. I’m almost afraid to read that one….!
So, No Research, Per SeTo return to the original reader’s email, about my prodigious amount of research… As you can see, I actually haven’t done any research about King Arthur himself. I’ve spent a lot of time sorting out the mythology, trying to off-load most of the medieval embellishments and bring the stories back to the original roots.
Some of the medieval stories I couldn’t offload. I would hate myself (so would you) if I hadn’t included Lancelot and Guenivere, for example. But I shifted them around a bit so they would fit in with the culture, morals and sensibilities of the Celtic tribes in the sixth century.
And there’s nary a “sir” or piece of plate armor to be found anywhere in the series.
July 30, 2022
Time for 20% Off Everything
It’s the second last day of the month, which is the start of the four day SRP monthly sale, where you can get 20% off absolutely anything in the SRP store. That includes boxed sets, pre-orders, even books already on sale. It also includes every author at SRP, not just me. So if you like other genres beside mine, you can dip into a new-to-you author at a discount.
The sale started this morning, and ends at midnight MDT on August 2nd. You can use the coupon as often as you want, give it to friends to use, and buy as much as you wish, until the deadline.
Use the coupon code: R9AJUG3A. Enter the code as you check out to have the 20% discounted from your whole shopping basket.
Start here to sort and filter the books you’re interested in. And enjoy your browsing!
Tracy
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Call of the Void – A Writer’s Mind At Work
What do you feel when you look at photos like this? What about when you’re on high balconies? Heights of any kind?
Do you get the strange sensation that you could just…jump? Even if you’re not in the slightest suicidal?
That sensation is so common, it has a name. The French call it l’appel du vide — the Call of the Void. Scientists have been studying it and there is still no strong consensus on why we feel that way. The only thing we can agree upon is that it is the weirdest sensation.
But there’s something even weirder than that. A writer’s mind. My mind, actually. Because when I was reading about the Call of the Void, my mind spun off from it and started building a story out of it.
What if one could inject that sensation into other people? Or deliver it to other people from a distance, like a rifle bullet? And what if one could soup up the sensation, so that it became undeniable? So that people actually did jump?
Of course, once the scientists had finished tinkering with the sensation building serum, a psychopath who wants to rule the world would then have to steal it, make it even more powerful, or else figure out a way to deliver it to millions of people at once (via YouTube, perhaps?).
Even better: The psychopathic bad guy figures out a way to cast it across the globe, but only certain DNA sequences are affected by it. Say, only dark haired people. Or blue eyed people. This would trigger race wars and international crises.
That’s the political thriller version.
Maybe this serum gets spread around the world, affects and distorts the DNA of everyone in the world, and now all of us have to live, work and play in single story buildings. Forever. That would build to a global demand for more and more land on which to build our single-story complexes and conflicts over the decreasing amount of available land.
That’s the science fiction version.
A hero could save the day, of course. She would either figure out a formula to counter the serum (Tech thriller), or fight her way into the psycho’s complex and destroy the only serum supply and all the research data (action thriller).
Maybe there’s a SEAL helping her break into the complex, too, but she suspects he’s actually working for the psychopath, which puts her in a quandary because she’s drawn to him and his direct way of looking at the world…
And that’s the romantic suspense version.
That’s what my mind does when I look at the picture, above.
Writers…!
