Veronica Scott's Blog, page 49
May 16, 2020
Crack Wide Open Weekend Writing Warriors
Now taking excerpts from LANDON: A BADARI WARRIORS SCIFI ROMANCE NOVEL.
Here’s the link to the Weekend Writing Warriors central page, so you can visit all the participants sharing excerpts today…a fun way to sample new books and find new authors! (Also welcome to the Sunday Snippet visitors!)
Punctuation may be wonky to comply with our guidelines here. May be edited a bit from published version.
If you haven’t read any of my Badari Warriors series: Genetically engineered soldiers of the far futu...
May 15, 2020
Veronica Does A Quiz or Two
DepositPhoto
As my longtime readers know, I love doing quizzes, which for me are actually fun interview questions some magazine or blog gave to a celebrity, and then I do my own take on the Q&A. Today I’m combining a few questions from a recent People magazine interview with Liam Hemsworth and some from an interview my friend Cara Bristol sent me that BookBub did with James Patterson. (Because Cara knows how much I enjoy doing these things – thanks, Cara!)
Last time I sang out loud: Yesterday in...
May 13, 2020
New Releases in #SciFi #Fantasy and Paranormal Romance for Wednesday MAY 13
As always, I recommend sampling before you buy! I have not read most of the new releases listed (although I always end up one-clicking a bunch as I prepare these posts L
OL).
**************************************************
THE MAGNIFICENT CYBORG (CYBORGS ON MARS BOOK 4) by Honey Phillips
W-246 is one of the last cyborgs sent to Mars to work on the terraforming project. While he doesn’t remember how he became a cyborg, he has accepted his new role as a territorial judge. Until he encounters Che...
May 9, 2020
In Need of Transport Weekend Writing Warriors
Now taking excerpts from LANDON: A BADARI WARRIORS SCIFI ROMANCE NOVEL.
Here’s the link to the Weekend Writing Warriors central page, so you can visit all the participants sharing excerpts today…a fun way to sample new books and find new authors! (Also welcome to the Sunday Snippet visitors!)
Punctuation may be wonky to comply with our guidelines here. May be edited a bit from published version.
If you haven’t read any of my Badari Warriors series: Genetically engineered soldiers of the far futu...
October 28, 2019
Why I Wrote WINTER SOLSTICE DREAM
This fantasy holiday romance novella was one of those rare books that actually wrote itself, which is always such a gift from the Muse. I type as fast as I can and hope to get all the words transferred from my mind to the page without losing anything.
There were quite a few factors that went into Winter Solstice Dream, one being I’ve always wanted to write a holiday romance (Regency romances set at Christmas are catnip to me) but since I write scifi romance for the most part, and ancient Egyptian paranormal romances, I didn’t see how I was going to manage that. (Although I did once write a short story about Thanksgiving being celebrated on my luxury interstellar cruise liner, which can be found in the STAR CRUISE STOWAWAY collection of my shorter works. That was a fun challenge!)
A few years ago I published my first book in a projected fantasy romance world I developed, The Captive Shifter and it recently occurred to me I could tell a perfectly good holiday story set in this time and place. I’ve always been planning to write sequels and connected stories for that world, known as Claddare. So I needed to adjust my thinking from a holiday we celebrate to creating a holiday the people in Claddare might enjoy in midwinter.
In creating this alternate world originally, I was partially inspired by Andre Norton’s Witch World series, loving the way she mixed magic and mysteries. My all-time favorite of hers in this vein was Year of the Unicorn and not that I’ll ever write at her level, but I was going for something of the feel of those stories (not the almost science fiction territory the first few in the Witch World series had).
I was also inspired by the classic movie “Ladyhawke” (who isn’t, if you love fantasy?), although my world is entirely fictional, not tied to anything in the actual Earthly Middle Ages. Halvor’s horse in this novella owes a lot to the wonderful steed in Ladyhawke.
And of course “Lord of the Rings”, the movie trilogy more than the actual novels, influenced me.
I love reading great fantasy series, like Jeffe Kennedy’s Twelve Kingdoms books and Grace Draven’s Radiance (Wraith Kings) among others but I’m not up to writing such complex and sweeping novels right now. If ever! So I concentrate on the smaller, standalone stories for Claddare, although I do have a big plot arc in mind for Claddare that I’m working within. Speaking only for myself, I think a writer’s skills grow over time – I’ve moved from writing standalones to also writing my Badari Warriors series with an overarching arc, which was something I never expected when I first was published – which adds to the fun. So I’m confident Claddare will grow into many more books. As always, my problem is never having enough time to write All The Things.
I always enjoy having magic as a plot element and there’s quite a bit here in the new novella, one way and another. We don’t see too much from the Witches of Azrimar themselves this time but Nadelma, my heroine, has her own powers of a completely different sort. I’ve also always been intrigued by desserts containing charms or favors and found a good way to work the concept into this story on a grand scale. But after all, Nadelma is baking a cake for the hundreds who’ll attend the Solstice Night Ball.
Nadelma appeared briefly in The Captive Shifter, but both books stand alone. I felt that she, as the Head Cook in the Witch Queen’s palace, would be an interesting character to learn more about. I loved the idea of making this a Cinderella type tale, complete with those sparkly shoes, although they aren’t key to the Happy Ever After ending. I had to have them in the story though! Readers have asked me for more about Nadelma so it felt good to finally oblige.
The other thing was that the timing was good because we just released Pets in Space® 4, with my novel STAR CRUISE: IDOL’S CURSE included, on October 8th and I didn’t want to ‘compete’ with myself and with PETS by releasing another scifi romance in the same time frame. I’d just released a new novel in my ancient Egyptian series, Return of the Dancer of the Nile, so I realized I had a window to write a new Claddare story without having to feel I was stealing time away from my SFR series.
There were quite a few factors that went into Winter Solstice Dream, one being I’ve always wanted to write a holiday romance (Regency romances set at Christmas are catnip to me) but since I write scifi romance for the most part, and ancient Egyptian paranormal romances, I didn’t see how I was going to manage that. (Although I did once write a short story about Thanksgiving being celebrated on my luxury interstellar cruise liner, which can be found in the STAR CRUISE STOWAWAY collection of my shorter works. That was a fun challenge!)
A few years ago I published my first book in a projected fantasy romance world I developed, The Captive Shifter and it recently occurred to me I could tell a perfectly good holiday story set in this time and place. I’ve always been planning to write sequels and connected stories for that world, known as Claddare. So I needed to adjust my thinking from a holiday we celebrate to creating a holiday the people in Claddare might enjoy in midwinter.
In creating this alternate world originally, I was partially inspired by Andre Norton’s Witch World series, loving the way she mixed magic and mysteries. My all-time favorite of hers in this vein was Year of the Unicorn and not that I’ll ever write at her level, but I was going for something of the feel of those stories (not the almost science fiction territory the first few in the Witch World series had).
I was also inspired by the classic movie “Ladyhawke” (who isn’t, if you love fantasy?), although my world is entirely fictional, not tied to anything in the actual Earthly Middle Ages. Halvor’s horse in this novella owes a lot to the wonderful steed in Ladyhawke.
And of course “Lord of the Rings”, the movie trilogy more than the actual novels, influenced me.
I love reading great fantasy series, like Jeffe Kennedy’s Twelve Kingdoms books and Grace Draven’s Radiance (Wraith Kings) among others but I’m not up to writing such complex and sweeping novels right now. If ever! So I concentrate on the smaller, standalone stories for Claddare, although I do have a big plot arc in mind for Claddare that I’m working within. Speaking only for myself, I think a writer’s skills grow over time – I’ve moved from writing standalones to also writing my Badari Warriors series with an overarching arc, which was something I never expected when I first was published – which adds to the fun. So I’m confident Claddare will grow into many more books. As always, my problem is never having enough time to write All The Things.
I always enjoy having magic as a plot element and there’s quite a bit here in the new novella, one way and another. We don’t see too much from the Witches of Azrimar themselves this time but Nadelma, my heroine, has her own powers of a completely different sort. I’ve also always been intrigued by desserts containing charms or favors and found a good way to work the concept into this story on a grand scale. But after all, Nadelma is baking a cake for the hundreds who’ll attend the Solstice Night Ball.
Nadelma appeared briefly in The Captive Shifter, but both books stand alone. I felt that she, as the Head Cook in the Witch Queen’s palace, would be an interesting character to learn more about. I loved the idea of making this a Cinderella type tale, complete with those sparkly shoes, although they aren’t key to the Happy Ever After ending. I had to have them in the story though! Readers have asked me for more about Nadelma so it felt good to finally oblige.
The other thing was that the timing was good because we just released Pets in Space® 4, with my novel STAR CRUISE: IDOL’S CURSE included, on October 8th and I didn’t want to ‘compete’ with myself and with PETS by releasing another scifi romance in the same time frame. I’d just released a new novel in my ancient Egyptian series, Return of the Dancer of the Nile, so I realized I had a window to write a new Claddare story without having to feel I was stealing time away from my SFR series.
October 19, 2019
Why I Wrote STAR CRUISE IDOL'S CURSE
This past week or so since we released the Pets In Space® 4 anthology has been a whirlwind and yesterday we hit the USA Today Best Seller’s list! I’m beaming and sending thanks to all our readers and everyone who supported the book and spread the word. I’m happy for the charity we support too, Hero Dogs, Inc.
We’ve had some wonderful, fun reviews too!
The events in STAR CRUISE: IDOL’S CURSE, my story in this year’s anthology, take place on my interstellar luxury cruise liner, the Nebula Zephyr. I always have so much fun revisiting my ship and having new adventures there.
Usually I start with the concept of the pet for my PISA stories and develop the plot from what the animal ‘suggests’ to me but this time my jumping off place was legends about bad luck hitting tourists who steal rocks from certain locales.
I’ve always been fascinated by these myths and the tales of bad luck people believe they incur if they ‘steal’ a rock from a certain place. (And when I was researching this topic, I discovered there are various tourist spots where this belief flourishes, not just in Hawaii. The Petrified Forest in northern Arizona is another area where people frantically return rocks to the park after thinking their illicit souvenir has brought them bad luck.) I wanted to be sure I wasn’t doing cultural appropriation if I took this basic concept for my story, so I was relieved to find the modern legend arises in various places and is believed to have been begun in one locale by a tour bus driver who didn’t want volcanic ash and grit from purloined chunks off the beach or mountain messing up his vehicles. Another variation on the story says because it’s against the law to remove anything from a national park, a ranger invented the story to add an additional layer of ‘scariness’ to deter would-be souvenir hunters.
One of the more interesting pieces of research I did was reading Bad Luck Hot Rocks by Ryan Thompson, dealing with the issue as it relates to the Petrified Forest in northern Arizona.
Of course since I’m writing science fiction, I then took the entire topic a step further and gave my ‘rock’ some scary attributes, the ability to do real harm and a bit of carving to justify referring to an idol’s curse in the title.
It seemed to me the idea of tourists and souvenirs fit in very nicely with my luxury cruise ship, and then since an entire deck of the ship is devoted to recreating a beach from the planet Tahumaroa Two, it was logical for the rock or ‘idol’ in question in my story to have come from that planet and need to go back there. This led me to ponder who in the crew would be likely to become involved with returning a rock and I decided it was time for the Cruise Director, Juli Shaeffer, to get her story. She’s been referenced many times in other STAR CRUISE stories but we really never met her. I got to do all kinds of fun research into what exactly a cruise director does on Earth and then embellish and enhance for my starship.
My next challenge was how to put a pet front and center in the story, and to engage them in a meaningful fashion with the action. I decided Juli and Third Officer Steve Aureli had unfinished romantic business, and that Steve has an elderly aunt traveling aboard this particular cruise. Every time I thought about the character of Aunt Dian, I saw one of the Gabor sisters in my head, dressed in pink and a froufrou feather boa, clutching a tiny dog. (The Gabors were famous actresses in their day and Eva from the ‘Green Acres’ TV show is kind of who I was going for, although ZsaZsa did play Queen of Outer space once in a movie.) Of course Dian and Charrli, her dog, have a lot more backstory and aren’t what they seem on the surface. For one thing, they’re veterans of the Sectors Special Forces Z Corps, which means Charrli is very smart and telepathic with Dian. Charrli bonds with Juli and has an affinity for the rock or idol of the novel’s title.
Then I let the events unfold from there!
The blurb: An unusual bequest….
Juli Shaeffer, the Nebula Zephyr’s cruise director, receives a mysterious bequest from the estate of a longtime passenger – a lump of rock taken from a reef on the planet Tahumaroa. Legend states anyone who steals from the ocean gods will be cursed. The passenger’s will requests the rock be returned to the beach so his heirs won’t be affected by the bad luck he believed he’d incurred. Juli doesn’t believe in superstitions and she agrees to carry out this small favor on the ship’s next stop at the planet in question.
Until the rock disappears from her office…
When the rock disappears and reappears in various locations around the ship, and seems connected to a steadily escalating series of mishaps, Juli turns to Third Officer Steve Aureli as the only one she feels she can trust. Along with Steve and his elderly Aunt Dian – a passenger aboard the Nebula Zephyr for this cruise – she investigates the strange series of malfunctions plaguing the interstellar luxury liner. Steve and Juli enlist his Aunt Dian’s dog, Charrli, a retired Sectors Z Corps canine, to help them track the missing rock as it moves about the ship.
Juli and Steve must find the rock, hang onto it and transport it to the planet’s surface, before the alien idol’s curse turns deadly. The attraction between the two of them grows as the threat to Juli becomes more and more focused. Can she carry out her task while he keeps her safe from the alien curse? Will the capricious alien idol bring them good fortune…or disaster?
As one reviewer said, "The rock is complicated..."!!!
We’ve had some wonderful, fun reviews too!
The events in STAR CRUISE: IDOL’S CURSE, my story in this year’s anthology, take place on my interstellar luxury cruise liner, the Nebula Zephyr. I always have so much fun revisiting my ship and having new adventures there.
Usually I start with the concept of the pet for my PISA stories and develop the plot from what the animal ‘suggests’ to me but this time my jumping off place was legends about bad luck hitting tourists who steal rocks from certain locales.
I’ve always been fascinated by these myths and the tales of bad luck people believe they incur if they ‘steal’ a rock from a certain place. (And when I was researching this topic, I discovered there are various tourist spots where this belief flourishes, not just in Hawaii. The Petrified Forest in northern Arizona is another area where people frantically return rocks to the park after thinking their illicit souvenir has brought them bad luck.) I wanted to be sure I wasn’t doing cultural appropriation if I took this basic concept for my story, so I was relieved to find the modern legend arises in various places and is believed to have been begun in one locale by a tour bus driver who didn’t want volcanic ash and grit from purloined chunks off the beach or mountain messing up his vehicles. Another variation on the story says because it’s against the law to remove anything from a national park, a ranger invented the story to add an additional layer of ‘scariness’ to deter would-be souvenir hunters.
One of the more interesting pieces of research I did was reading Bad Luck Hot Rocks by Ryan Thompson, dealing with the issue as it relates to the Petrified Forest in northern Arizona.
Of course since I’m writing science fiction, I then took the entire topic a step further and gave my ‘rock’ some scary attributes, the ability to do real harm and a bit of carving to justify referring to an idol’s curse in the title.
It seemed to me the idea of tourists and souvenirs fit in very nicely with my luxury cruise ship, and then since an entire deck of the ship is devoted to recreating a beach from the planet Tahumaroa Two, it was logical for the rock or ‘idol’ in question in my story to have come from that planet and need to go back there. This led me to ponder who in the crew would be likely to become involved with returning a rock and I decided it was time for the Cruise Director, Juli Shaeffer, to get her story. She’s been referenced many times in other STAR CRUISE stories but we really never met her. I got to do all kinds of fun research into what exactly a cruise director does on Earth and then embellish and enhance for my starship.
My next challenge was how to put a pet front and center in the story, and to engage them in a meaningful fashion with the action. I decided Juli and Third Officer Steve Aureli had unfinished romantic business, and that Steve has an elderly aunt traveling aboard this particular cruise. Every time I thought about the character of Aunt Dian, I saw one of the Gabor sisters in my head, dressed in pink and a froufrou feather boa, clutching a tiny dog. (The Gabors were famous actresses in their day and Eva from the ‘Green Acres’ TV show is kind of who I was going for, although ZsaZsa did play Queen of Outer space once in a movie.) Of course Dian and Charrli, her dog, have a lot more backstory and aren’t what they seem on the surface. For one thing, they’re veterans of the Sectors Special Forces Z Corps, which means Charrli is very smart and telepathic with Dian. Charrli bonds with Juli and has an affinity for the rock or idol of the novel’s title.
Then I let the events unfold from there!
The blurb: An unusual bequest….
Juli Shaeffer, the Nebula Zephyr’s cruise director, receives a mysterious bequest from the estate of a longtime passenger – a lump of rock taken from a reef on the planet Tahumaroa. Legend states anyone who steals from the ocean gods will be cursed. The passenger’s will requests the rock be returned to the beach so his heirs won’t be affected by the bad luck he believed he’d incurred. Juli doesn’t believe in superstitions and she agrees to carry out this small favor on the ship’s next stop at the planet in question.
Until the rock disappears from her office…
When the rock disappears and reappears in various locations around the ship, and seems connected to a steadily escalating series of mishaps, Juli turns to Third Officer Steve Aureli as the only one she feels she can trust. Along with Steve and his elderly Aunt Dian – a passenger aboard the Nebula Zephyr for this cruise – she investigates the strange series of malfunctions plaguing the interstellar luxury liner. Steve and Juli enlist his Aunt Dian’s dog, Charrli, a retired Sectors Z Corps canine, to help them track the missing rock as it moves about the ship.
Juli and Steve must find the rock, hang onto it and transport it to the planet’s surface, before the alien idol’s curse turns deadly. The attraction between the two of them grows as the threat to Juli becomes more and more focused. Can she carry out her task while he keeps her safe from the alien curse? Will the capricious alien idol bring them good fortune…or disaster?
As one reviewer said, "The rock is complicated..."!!!
September 10, 2019
Thoughts on the Art of the Book Blurb
If you follow my blog, you know I do a weekly report on New Releases in my three favorite genres – scifi romance, fantasy romance and paranormal romance. I also scoop up a lot of new books that aren’t strictly in those three categories (urban fantasy, cozy paranormal mysteries etc.) and then I also add what I call ‘releases of note’, which may be hard scifi or other related genres that I find interesting and think maybe the readers perusing my list might be intrigued by.
I typically have 50-60 books each week. This is a curated list, by which I mean I don’t do any automated process and I certainly don’t cover every book released. I have my methods and my sources and I look at factors including but not limited to the covers, the reviews, the author’s past reviews, sometimes I read the “look Inside” feature to see how the author’s ‘voice’ is – I cover books in some areas I don’t personally read often, like dark romance and MPREG but which I do know the readers enjoy and would like to see…now, I don’t necessarily do all that up front checking for every book. I only have so much time and my primary priority is writing my own books! Gotta pay the rent and buy cat food for Jake the Cat…and I trust the quality of books by authors well known to me in those genres. But especially if an author is new-to-me, or has no reviews yet, or has a couple of iffy reviews…
But my main tool is the blurb the author or publisher has provided. This is the book listing’s description of who the main characters are, the challenges facing them, etc.
So today I have a little bit of a rant about book blurbs.
To me, the main purpose is that after your professionally done cover intrigues a reader enough to click on the sales page, they’ll read the blurb and decide YES, they want to one-click this book and read it. Now I’m no authority on blurb writing. I used to have the wonderful Cathryn Cade do mine, when she was the Blurb Queen and since she stopped providing that service, I try to model my blurbs on what she did. I write M/F, so I briefly introduce the heroine, the hero and one paragraph usually about the challenge – escaping the evil alien scientists or solving the mysterious outbreak or defeating the interstellar crime syndicate. I may pose one of those “Can their love survive while escaping this disaster…?” type questions at the end. This approach seems to work for me.
When doing my new releases post I see everything from literally no blurb at all (what???! Yes, really, there are some out there) to a sentence or two, to the 3-4 quick paragraphs approach I use, to lengthy lengthy blurbs that try to give every plot point, to excerpts from the book standing in as blurb.
I kinda ruthlessly truncate the overly lengthy blurbs, frankly. I only want my already voluminous posts to be so long and OMG, just whet the reader’s interest, don’t tell try to tell them everything! (Reminder: This is all my opinion so your mileage may vary, as we authors say BUT I do see a ton of blurbs every week.) I do indicate there’s more blurb on the ebook seller page.
The ones that really puzzle me are typically on the later books in a series where the author blithely assumes anyone checking out their book must have read the entire series to this point and will know what is meant by something along the lines of “Frank and Sallie go to Weird Town to tell the wamluks the silver talzq is broken. Harry rides along.” Huh?
(Shaking my head in sorrow for lost opportunities.) Okay, maybe your loyal readers will snap this up. Anyone seeing a mention of your series for the first time at around book #three to book #ad infinitum most likely won’t. I don’t know about you but I always want new-to-me readers so I try to give an enticing blurb, and maybe (but not always) add a general paragraph about the series itself – here’s what I say about my Badari Warriors, for example: Genetically engineered soldiers of the far future, the Badari were created by alien enemies to fight humans. But then the scientists kidnapped an entire human colony from the Sectors to use as subjects in twisted experiments…the Badari and the humans made common cause, rebelled and escaped the labs. Now they live side by side in a sanctuary valley protected by a powerful Artificial Intelligence, and wage unceasing war on the aliens.
Sometimes, if I’m feeling extra helpful or I loved the cover or I really want a book in that genre to include, I’ll go searching for book 1 in the series and pull part of that blurb, where hopefully the author did explain the overarching concept of the series, and I’ll include that information properly labelled in my Wednesday listing along with the cryptic blurb for the latest book. But not always…it’s not really my job to sell your book.
I may also do this if the blurb really doesn’t explain the scifi or paranormal element of the plot but there’s more information in the blurb for an earlier book. (And no, this post wasn’t inspired by the last authors I did this for – it’s been on my mind for a while!)
But what a missed opportunity to have the hundreds of people who kindly come and view my new releases report every week at least consider your series, all for the want of a little more information to intrigue them.
OK and if you’re on book #37 of a really well selling series, maybe you don’t need to bother with a blurb in any detail but how many of us enjoy that lovely state of being?
I’m not generally in favor of the excerpt approach either. For one thing, that’s what the ‘look inside’ features does to some extent, as far as allowing the reader to sample your style and the flavor of the story. For another thing, it’s often hard to know what to make of a random excerpt from a novel out of context. Personally I have a hard time relating to characters who just start ‘talking to me’ when I’m not invested even a little bit in the story yet.
And I certainly don’t think an excerpt should be your only blurb! If your characters have to carry the load of explaining who they are and the plot and everything else in an excerpt, maybe you have too much backstory and/or ‘telling’ in your novel?
Another thing to watch out for is having typos, misspellings or editing issues in your blurb. Sure we’re all human and mistakes do happen but wow, what a turnoff to a reader (speaking for myself) to see a blurb that commits multiple slips. I’m likely to pass on that one.
I do applaud authors who include a little extra information at the end, whether it’s a serious trigger warning (I’m not getting into the whole trigger warning debate here) or a clarification that the book is reverse harem, or a bully academy, or contains material suitable only for mature readers or has a cliffhanger ending…and some people have funny taglines about general information in the series (mermaids solving cozy murder mysteries and baking cupcakes in a town where it’s always summer solstice [which I just totally made up]).
After the cover, your blurb is your most important tool to get your book into the hands of the readers (or onto their ebook readers) so even if you loathe writing blurbs (and there are still people who write them for a fee out there by the way), be sure you have a nicely polished not-too-long, not-too-short piece of prose to make us highly intrigued and need to know more!
Readers – what do you think? What kind of blurbs work or don’t work for you? Any tips for authors, including me?
And here’s my latest, by the way:
REEDE: A BADARI WARRIORS SCIFI ROMANCE NOVEL (SECTORS NEW ALLIES SERIES BOOK 9
Lt. Fallyn Damara was sent by the Sectors to investigate a strange transmission from an isolated planet and determine whether the residents of a vanished colony had been transported there by alien enemies. Fallyn’s ship crashes and she’s taken prisoner by the Khagrish scientists, to await her fate in the slate of horrifying experiments being conducted.
Reede, the second ranking enforcer in the Badari Warrior pack, volunteers to be recaptured by the Khagrish in an effort to locate and rescue Fallyn inside the deadly lab complex.
While a prisoner Reede discovers Fallyn is the woman destined to become his fated mate but the moment is bittersweet because Fallyn will be leaving their world at the first opportunity, to report back to the Sectors. He refuses to complete the mate bond, believing to do so will lead to nothing but lifelong misery for them both, separated by lightyears and interstellar politics.
For her part, Fallyn wants to shake up the rule-bound enforcer and persuade him to take a chance on love.
But first they have to escape the Khagrish.
I typically have 50-60 books each week. This is a curated list, by which I mean I don’t do any automated process and I certainly don’t cover every book released. I have my methods and my sources and I look at factors including but not limited to the covers, the reviews, the author’s past reviews, sometimes I read the “look Inside” feature to see how the author’s ‘voice’ is – I cover books in some areas I don’t personally read often, like dark romance and MPREG but which I do know the readers enjoy and would like to see…now, I don’t necessarily do all that up front checking for every book. I only have so much time and my primary priority is writing my own books! Gotta pay the rent and buy cat food for Jake the Cat…and I trust the quality of books by authors well known to me in those genres. But especially if an author is new-to-me, or has no reviews yet, or has a couple of iffy reviews…
But my main tool is the blurb the author or publisher has provided. This is the book listing’s description of who the main characters are, the challenges facing them, etc.
So today I have a little bit of a rant about book blurbs.
To me, the main purpose is that after your professionally done cover intrigues a reader enough to click on the sales page, they’ll read the blurb and decide YES, they want to one-click this book and read it. Now I’m no authority on blurb writing. I used to have the wonderful Cathryn Cade do mine, when she was the Blurb Queen and since she stopped providing that service, I try to model my blurbs on what she did. I write M/F, so I briefly introduce the heroine, the hero and one paragraph usually about the challenge – escaping the evil alien scientists or solving the mysterious outbreak or defeating the interstellar crime syndicate. I may pose one of those “Can their love survive while escaping this disaster…?” type questions at the end. This approach seems to work for me.
When doing my new releases post I see everything from literally no blurb at all (what???! Yes, really, there are some out there) to a sentence or two, to the 3-4 quick paragraphs approach I use, to lengthy lengthy blurbs that try to give every plot point, to excerpts from the book standing in as blurb.
I kinda ruthlessly truncate the overly lengthy blurbs, frankly. I only want my already voluminous posts to be so long and OMG, just whet the reader’s interest, don’t tell try to tell them everything! (Reminder: This is all my opinion so your mileage may vary, as we authors say BUT I do see a ton of blurbs every week.) I do indicate there’s more blurb on the ebook seller page.
The ones that really puzzle me are typically on the later books in a series where the author blithely assumes anyone checking out their book must have read the entire series to this point and will know what is meant by something along the lines of “Frank and Sallie go to Weird Town to tell the wamluks the silver talzq is broken. Harry rides along.” Huh?
(Shaking my head in sorrow for lost opportunities.) Okay, maybe your loyal readers will snap this up. Anyone seeing a mention of your series for the first time at around book #three to book #ad infinitum most likely won’t. I don’t know about you but I always want new-to-me readers so I try to give an enticing blurb, and maybe (but not always) add a general paragraph about the series itself – here’s what I say about my Badari Warriors, for example: Genetically engineered soldiers of the far future, the Badari were created by alien enemies to fight humans. But then the scientists kidnapped an entire human colony from the Sectors to use as subjects in twisted experiments…the Badari and the humans made common cause, rebelled and escaped the labs. Now they live side by side in a sanctuary valley protected by a powerful Artificial Intelligence, and wage unceasing war on the aliens.
Sometimes, if I’m feeling extra helpful or I loved the cover or I really want a book in that genre to include, I’ll go searching for book 1 in the series and pull part of that blurb, where hopefully the author did explain the overarching concept of the series, and I’ll include that information properly labelled in my Wednesday listing along with the cryptic blurb for the latest book. But not always…it’s not really my job to sell your book.
I may also do this if the blurb really doesn’t explain the scifi or paranormal element of the plot but there’s more information in the blurb for an earlier book. (And no, this post wasn’t inspired by the last authors I did this for – it’s been on my mind for a while!)
But what a missed opportunity to have the hundreds of people who kindly come and view my new releases report every week at least consider your series, all for the want of a little more information to intrigue them.
OK and if you’re on book #37 of a really well selling series, maybe you don’t need to bother with a blurb in any detail but how many of us enjoy that lovely state of being?
I’m not generally in favor of the excerpt approach either. For one thing, that’s what the ‘look inside’ features does to some extent, as far as allowing the reader to sample your style and the flavor of the story. For another thing, it’s often hard to know what to make of a random excerpt from a novel out of context. Personally I have a hard time relating to characters who just start ‘talking to me’ when I’m not invested even a little bit in the story yet.
And I certainly don’t think an excerpt should be your only blurb! If your characters have to carry the load of explaining who they are and the plot and everything else in an excerpt, maybe you have too much backstory and/or ‘telling’ in your novel?
Another thing to watch out for is having typos, misspellings or editing issues in your blurb. Sure we’re all human and mistakes do happen but wow, what a turnoff to a reader (speaking for myself) to see a blurb that commits multiple slips. I’m likely to pass on that one.
I do applaud authors who include a little extra information at the end, whether it’s a serious trigger warning (I’m not getting into the whole trigger warning debate here) or a clarification that the book is reverse harem, or a bully academy, or contains material suitable only for mature readers or has a cliffhanger ending…and some people have funny taglines about general information in the series (mermaids solving cozy murder mysteries and baking cupcakes in a town where it’s always summer solstice [which I just totally made up]).
After the cover, your blurb is your most important tool to get your book into the hands of the readers (or onto their ebook readers) so even if you loathe writing blurbs (and there are still people who write them for a fee out there by the way), be sure you have a nicely polished not-too-long, not-too-short piece of prose to make us highly intrigued and need to know more!
Readers – what do you think? What kind of blurbs work or don’t work for you? Any tips for authors, including me?
And here’s my latest, by the way:
REEDE: A BADARI WARRIORS SCIFI ROMANCE NOVEL (SECTORS NEW ALLIES SERIES BOOK 9
Lt. Fallyn Damara was sent by the Sectors to investigate a strange transmission from an isolated planet and determine whether the residents of a vanished colony had been transported there by alien enemies. Fallyn’s ship crashes and she’s taken prisoner by the Khagrish scientists, to await her fate in the slate of horrifying experiments being conducted.
Reede, the second ranking enforcer in the Badari Warrior pack, volunteers to be recaptured by the Khagrish in an effort to locate and rescue Fallyn inside the deadly lab complex.
While a prisoner Reede discovers Fallyn is the woman destined to become his fated mate but the moment is bittersweet because Fallyn will be leaving their world at the first opportunity, to report back to the Sectors. He refuses to complete the mate bond, believing to do so will lead to nothing but lifelong misery for them both, separated by lightyears and interstellar politics.
For her part, Fallyn wants to shake up the rule-bound enforcer and persuade him to take a chance on love.
But first they have to escape the Khagrish.
July 27, 2019
Trends I See Coming in SciFi Romance
This week’s theme at the SFF& Blog: where is the SFF genre headed?
Since I write scifi romance, not the bigger world of science fiction and fantasy, I’m going to keep my scope for this post on a smaller scale as well.
I do a weekly New Releases post on my blog where I gather and curate a list of scifi/fantasy/paranormal romance new releases for the week. I have many different sources for identifying these books so every week I’m exposed to the trends in my three favorite genres, based on what I see being released, the reviews, the rankings etc. (Here’s the link to my latest such post if you’d like to see how I present the ones I choose to list.)
There’s a certain through line of SFR that’s adventure-oriented with a strong romance running through the plot and varying levels of steaminess from almost closed door to pages of inventive sexy times with tails and tentacles and other interesting appendages. I write somewhere in the middle of the range, with your basic human heroes and heroines and two or three lovemaking scenes per book as their relationship deepens. I’m descriptive about the sexy times but not at great length. I did endow my genetically engineered Badari Warriors with some enhancements the ladies enjoy but did not go as far as some authors can capably go in their inventiveness. There’s a lot of action and adventure in these novels, not only mine but those of other authors. I think this kind of ‘bread-and-butter’ SFR will continue to be written and voraciously read.
In no certain order, some other thoughts on this:
I’ve been seeing more and more authors bringing their own past gaming experience to their SFR novels, either as avid game players or as developers or both. I think that trend will continue.
I’ve been seeing more superhero style plots, which is probably inevitable given the immense success of the Marvel Universe movies.
I think the alien abduction theme will continue to be very popular with SFR readers. It’s currently a staple of the genre and the hot seller lists.
I haven’t seen as much reverse harem (RH) appearing in SFR as I’d expected, given how hot the trend is in paranormal romance, although there is some. I think SFR lags behind PNR on trends, in terms of whatever is trendy in PNR shows up later in the SFR titles. Dragons are one example that comes to mind immediately. Lots of space going dragons, dragon-like and dragon shifter heroes now and not as many in PNR.
PNR RH is definitely going into a ‘bully academy’ direction right now, where the heroine is stuck as school with a lot of bullies (duh) but finds her five true-hearted men, be they shifters or mages or demons – well, you get the idea - and lives happily ever after eventually. So far I’m not seeing that in SFR but I bet it’s coming. Bullies at the Space Academy any day now…
I’m seeing more diversity in SFR, on the covers, in the novels and in the authors. I hope that trend will continue and grow!
I’m also seeing more LGBTQ SFR but not in a tidal wave…
Currently I’m seeing an emerging trend in the bigger Romancelandia world to have heroines on the autistic spectrum, so I can imagine we might see the same in SFR at some point.
I’ve seen something of a trend for PNR authors to take the ‘category romance’ type plots and apply those to their shifter stories – the bear shifter billionaire’s baby nanny (made that title up as far as I know – only meant as an example). I could imagine that trend translating into SFR and have seen some titles along those lines but not a rush of them as yet.
There also seems to be a huge market in PNR for 'cozies' - stories set in small towns, maybe with a light hearted romcom touch, and I have yet to see much if any in SFR. Something to watch for...
Dark romance and also the omegaverse type plots are appearing more and more. Issues of consent and power are the big hook in dark romance, along with anti-heroes, breaking taboos, etc. In the Omegaverse, typically (but not always) males known as ‘omegas’can become pregnant. Or the book may feature women who are ‘omega’ and sexual prey for every ‘alpha’ out there, and the ‘romance’ can be quite dark and brutal at times. Or you can have a blend of all of it. It’s not my personal thing, although I’ve read some dark romance and some Omegaverse, but I know many readers love it.
I’m seeing some authors who have not written SFR before coming in and attempting to “write to market” in the genre, with varying degrees of success.
And finally, I think Kindle Unlimited, which dominates SFR currently, will continue to be a major player, as long as Amazon continues to offer the subscription service. SFR readers are voracious inagoodway and evidently the subscription model of KU works well for them. Many weeks when I’m doing my new release post, I only have 2 or 3 SFR books I can report as being sold “wide” and all the rest are KU exclusive.
(You can still buy the ebooks outright from Amazon for your kindle of course, if you’re not in the KU subscription program but you can’t find them on other ebook seller sites like Barnes & Noble, Apple Books or Kobo.)
There’s a whole debate to be had among authors about the merits and issues with KU and I have no desire to get into all of that here, but I do think it’s a noteworthy aspect of the scifi romance marketplace, being so heavily committed to KU.
My books are all ‘wide’ and I’ve never been in KU. I have an instinctive aversion to putting all my eggs in one basket and I like the fact my readers can purchase the books on whatever platform they prefer. I understand I might be leaving all kinds of royalties and bonus payments on the table by not being in KU but the joy of being self-published (for all of us) is that we can make our own choices for our own reasons about how we want to define and pursue “success”.
What else am I missing? What trends do you see happening?
Since I write scifi romance, not the bigger world of science fiction and fantasy, I’m going to keep my scope for this post on a smaller scale as well.
I do a weekly New Releases post on my blog where I gather and curate a list of scifi/fantasy/paranormal romance new releases for the week. I have many different sources for identifying these books so every week I’m exposed to the trends in my three favorite genres, based on what I see being released, the reviews, the rankings etc. (Here’s the link to my latest such post if you’d like to see how I present the ones I choose to list.)
There’s a certain through line of SFR that’s adventure-oriented with a strong romance running through the plot and varying levels of steaminess from almost closed door to pages of inventive sexy times with tails and tentacles and other interesting appendages. I write somewhere in the middle of the range, with your basic human heroes and heroines and two or three lovemaking scenes per book as their relationship deepens. I’m descriptive about the sexy times but not at great length. I did endow my genetically engineered Badari Warriors with some enhancements the ladies enjoy but did not go as far as some authors can capably go in their inventiveness. There’s a lot of action and adventure in these novels, not only mine but those of other authors. I think this kind of ‘bread-and-butter’ SFR will continue to be written and voraciously read.
In no certain order, some other thoughts on this:
I’ve been seeing more and more authors bringing their own past gaming experience to their SFR novels, either as avid game players or as developers or both. I think that trend will continue.
I’ve been seeing more superhero style plots, which is probably inevitable given the immense success of the Marvel Universe movies.
I think the alien abduction theme will continue to be very popular with SFR readers. It’s currently a staple of the genre and the hot seller lists.
I haven’t seen as much reverse harem (RH) appearing in SFR as I’d expected, given how hot the trend is in paranormal romance, although there is some. I think SFR lags behind PNR on trends, in terms of whatever is trendy in PNR shows up later in the SFR titles. Dragons are one example that comes to mind immediately. Lots of space going dragons, dragon-like and dragon shifter heroes now and not as many in PNR.
PNR RH is definitely going into a ‘bully academy’ direction right now, where the heroine is stuck as school with a lot of bullies (duh) but finds her five true-hearted men, be they shifters or mages or demons – well, you get the idea - and lives happily ever after eventually. So far I’m not seeing that in SFR but I bet it’s coming. Bullies at the Space Academy any day now…
I’m seeing more diversity in SFR, on the covers, in the novels and in the authors. I hope that trend will continue and grow!
I’m also seeing more LGBTQ SFR but not in a tidal wave…
Currently I’m seeing an emerging trend in the bigger Romancelandia world to have heroines on the autistic spectrum, so I can imagine we might see the same in SFR at some point.
I’ve seen something of a trend for PNR authors to take the ‘category romance’ type plots and apply those to their shifter stories – the bear shifter billionaire’s baby nanny (made that title up as far as I know – only meant as an example). I could imagine that trend translating into SFR and have seen some titles along those lines but not a rush of them as yet.
There also seems to be a huge market in PNR for 'cozies' - stories set in small towns, maybe with a light hearted romcom touch, and I have yet to see much if any in SFR. Something to watch for...
Dark romance and also the omegaverse type plots are appearing more and more. Issues of consent and power are the big hook in dark romance, along with anti-heroes, breaking taboos, etc. In the Omegaverse, typically (but not always) males known as ‘omegas’can become pregnant. Or the book may feature women who are ‘omega’ and sexual prey for every ‘alpha’ out there, and the ‘romance’ can be quite dark and brutal at times. Or you can have a blend of all of it. It’s not my personal thing, although I’ve read some dark romance and some Omegaverse, but I know many readers love it.
I’m seeing some authors who have not written SFR before coming in and attempting to “write to market” in the genre, with varying degrees of success.
And finally, I think Kindle Unlimited, which dominates SFR currently, will continue to be a major player, as long as Amazon continues to offer the subscription service. SFR readers are voracious inagoodway and evidently the subscription model of KU works well for them. Many weeks when I’m doing my new release post, I only have 2 or 3 SFR books I can report as being sold “wide” and all the rest are KU exclusive.
(You can still buy the ebooks outright from Amazon for your kindle of course, if you’re not in the KU subscription program but you can’t find them on other ebook seller sites like Barnes & Noble, Apple Books or Kobo.)
There’s a whole debate to be had among authors about the merits and issues with KU and I have no desire to get into all of that here, but I do think it’s a noteworthy aspect of the scifi romance marketplace, being so heavily committed to KU.
My books are all ‘wide’ and I’ve never been in KU. I have an instinctive aversion to putting all my eggs in one basket and I like the fact my readers can purchase the books on whatever platform they prefer. I understand I might be leaving all kinds of royalties and bonus payments on the table by not being in KU but the joy of being self-published (for all of us) is that we can make our own choices for our own reasons about how we want to define and pursue “success”.
What else am I missing? What trends do you see happening?
July 26, 2019
Why I Wrote My Alien Empath SciFi Romance Series
Today I’m going to talk about why I wrote the four books in my alien empath series, starting with Star Cruise: Stowaway, which was originally written for the first Pets in Space™ anthology (and is now available separately).
From the beginning I knew I was going to place my Pets story in the Sectors, an interstellar civilization where most of my scifi romances occur. What kind of pet would be logical in a spacefaring world? Of course – cats go anywhere, any time, right? Not to mention that my own Jake the Cat is a strong advocate for more feline presence in my stories LOL.
I also wanted to have an alien pet involved, just for fun.
At the time I was writing Star Cruise: Outbreak and had a scene take place in the cargo hold. It occurred to me that even on a spaceship there might well be vermin, so I gave Moby the white rescue cat to the Cargo Master, Owen Embersson. Since he had the pet, Officer Embersson would have to be the romantic hero of the short story. What kind of a woman could he naturally become involved with? How could I write a plot for them that involved more than just everybody enjoying cats, feeding cats and playing with cat toys? Owen wouldn’t normally interact with the Nebula Zephyr’s passengers and I felt I’d done enough ‘crew member falls in love with another crew member’ stories for now…but he’d be the first person to interact with a stowaway!
Once I knew Tyrelle the heroine was going to be a stowaway, the rest of the plot elements fell into place for me.
I was always fascinated by the Star Trek episode “The Empath,’ and although my story goes off in its own direction completely, that was the original moment when I started thinking about a heroine who had this set of abilities. The Urban Dictionary defines empath as “a person who is capable of feeling the emotions of others despite the fact that they themselves are not going through the same situation.” Of course Tyrelle can do so much more, including forcing unsuspecting people to act on feelings they may not even realize they harbor. But there’s a cost to her…
I also enjoy the way Nalini Singh writes and uses Empaths in her Psy-Changeling series – my favorite book in the series is Shield of Winter, where Ivy Jane and the other empaths play a large role in saving their civilization. (No spoilers.)
Plenty of room in the creative universe for each of us to write our own version of empathy as a gift/curse/power/temptation!
Star Cruise: Outbreak features an alien pet, Midorri, who is kind of a cross between a tribble and a red tailed panda (my favorite animal after cats). I decided to keep her on board the Nebula Zephyr after the events of Outbreak so she could be involved in this Stowaway adventure too, and then as pets and secondary characters often do, she kept becoming more and more integral to the plot and revealing new capabilities I didn’t know about before. I got really fond of my furry little green friend with the six legs!
I realized after I finished the Star Cruise: Stowaway novella that I wasn’t done with the subject of these beautiful, empathic women and their predicament with the Sectors’ organized crime syndicate. I decided to tell a much longer story for Miriell, who is the sister of the Stowaway heroine. For Danger in the Stars I put her in the heart of the Amarotu Combine operation, at the mercy of her violent ‘controller’, and when I asked myself who would be her hero, Conor Stewart appeared. (To be clear, Conor is not the controller.)
She sees good in him, well hidden under the façade of the dangerous hitman and crime boss. He goes out of his way to help her when he can and cautious attraction blossoms between them. Not to give spoilers but there’s much more to Conor than meets the eye. He is a hero!
I made great efforts to ensure I didn’t stray into Stockholm Syndrome territory – where a victim may start to feel affection or emotion toward the captors as a psychological survival strategy. I tried to ensure that both Miriell and Conor stayed clear headed and genuine at all times about what the situation was and that their emotion was trustworthy true love, not an outgrowth of her captivity. Miriell was a high ranking priestess on her own planet and remains pragmatic at all times about those who hold her prisoner, including Conor. But her powers tell her he’s keeping secrets and she can’t help but wonder if her god Thuun has sent him to help her.
It’s not my usual Sectors spaceships and blasters scifi story (although there certainly are some of both elements in the action scenes) but I was really intrigued with telling this tale and exploring a few things about both the empathic priestess (which brings in my element of mysticism that I always like to incorporate) and the stone cold mob hitman, who has to fight his deepest instincts to preserve and protect. When it comes to Miriell, he can’t stand by and let her remain a pawn of the Combine. This is a romance, so the Happily Ever After ending is guaranteed, even if perilous for my couple to attain.
For the next book, Two Against the Stars, I thought it would be interesting to write about one of these captive empaths who manages to get free of the crime syndicate on her own and then is on the run from them and the authorities. I wondered what she’d do if confronted with a situation that required her to risk her own hard-won freedom. Of course that begged the question what the dire situation could be, and it had to involve a hero in jeopardy, since I’m writing romance.
Here’s the description of the eventual story (more about why I wrote certain parts below):
Empathic priestess Carialle has escaped the evil Amarotu Combine, but she’s hardly out of danger. Not when she risks everything to rescue a drugged man from a crooked veterans’ clinic. By lulling the clinic staff to sleep, she reveals her powers. And once again, criminals are after her and her rescuer.
Marcus Valerian, a wounded Special Forces veteran, never expected to have his life threatened by the clinic that’s supposed to help ex-soldiers like him. But when he wakes from a drugged state to find a lovely woman urging him to run–he does. In his family’s remote fishing cabin, he suffers the agony of withdrawal, soothed only by her powers.
In their idyllic hideaway, the two also discover a nova-hot attraction flaring. But can they stay alive long enough for it to become more? Not if the Combine has anything to say–they are not giving up until Marcus is dead and Carialle is their weapon.
Notice in the description that eventually the couple flees to a cabin deep in the woods? When I was a kid, we lived in upstate New York and my family had a vacation place on a lake nearby. The cabin was built from scratch by my grandfather and some of my best childhood memories center around that cabin and the lake, fishing, boating, swimming and hiking. I can even remember bits and pieces of when there was no cabin or even a road at all on our land – we had to hike in through the forest and sleep in tents. (I was really little then.) So I decided to write a version of the cabin into the book, as a safe haven for Carialle and Marcus. The real family cabin was only accessible via a very rough, unpaved road added later, so I exaggerated that situation a bit for the book. And of course my grandfather wasn’t a Special Forces veteran. Actually he worked for Nestle International at that point in time as an executive and wow did he get great gift baskets at the holidays! Despite being in an office nine to five, he had mad skills as a builder and wilderness scout and all round capable guy.
But the cabin, Marcus’s memories and some of the events that transpire there are my tribute to a very happy part of my own childhood. Of course a lot of what’s in the book is purely fictional LOL. To my knowledge our cabin lacked an Artificial Intelligence, a force shield and any subterranean facilities!
When it was time to write the fourth book, The Fated Stars, I wanted a really unique situation. I always feel I owe it to my readers to write a different take on each novel, not just repeat the same setup every time. I started pondering what would have happened to a male empathic priest from their planet of Tulavarra if he’d been kidnapped and forced into working for the crime bosses. My daughters have been challenging me to write a female soldier for several years now and I thought this book was my golden opportunity to write a really kick ass woman mercenary.
Cover artist Fiona Jayde created an alien carnival for me, although you have to look closely to see it on the cover, but I thought that was a fun touch…when I was little we used to go to the county fair and the volunteer firemen’s field days and I especially loved the merry go round. I pulled on those memories a bit when writing about the place where Samell is held prisoner. Of course I never met any aliens – to my knowledge! – at any of the rural fairs I attended as a kid (we did bring home a live duck named Cleveland once but that’s another story), but it was a fun concept to translate to the far future and the rim worlds of civilized space. Very different than anything I’d ever written before.
Writing Larissa, the tough heroine, was exciting because up to that point my major military characters had always been guys. There’s a unique fight scene in the book where she takes on one of the alien Shemdylann in hand to hand combat – no spoilers – and that was a lot of creative fun to think through. I’ve made the Shemdylann so imposing and invulnerable (except to blasters) in all the Sectors novels that now I had the challenge of saying “yes, but Larissa can win this fight because…” and make it believable.
There’s also an interlude where she and Samell have an encounter with an ancient, sentient tree (and its pets, the Amusing Ones) and I drew a bit on how I felt many years ago when my late husband and I took a vacation amidst the giant Sequoias.
I don’t know if I’ll feel the call to write another empath novel but never say never. I do have a plot in mind thanks to my busy Muse…
Star Cruise A Novella: Stowaway: With Star Cruise Rescue and Golden Token Short Stories
From the beginning I knew I was going to place my Pets story in the Sectors, an interstellar civilization where most of my scifi romances occur. What kind of pet would be logical in a spacefaring world? Of course – cats go anywhere, any time, right? Not to mention that my own Jake the Cat is a strong advocate for more feline presence in my stories LOL.
I also wanted to have an alien pet involved, just for fun.
At the time I was writing Star Cruise: Outbreak and had a scene take place in the cargo hold. It occurred to me that even on a spaceship there might well be vermin, so I gave Moby the white rescue cat to the Cargo Master, Owen Embersson. Since he had the pet, Officer Embersson would have to be the romantic hero of the short story. What kind of a woman could he naturally become involved with? How could I write a plot for them that involved more than just everybody enjoying cats, feeding cats and playing with cat toys? Owen wouldn’t normally interact with the Nebula Zephyr’s passengers and I felt I’d done enough ‘crew member falls in love with another crew member’ stories for now…but he’d be the first person to interact with a stowaway!
Once I knew Tyrelle the heroine was going to be a stowaway, the rest of the plot elements fell into place for me.
I was always fascinated by the Star Trek episode “The Empath,’ and although my story goes off in its own direction completely, that was the original moment when I started thinking about a heroine who had this set of abilities. The Urban Dictionary defines empath as “a person who is capable of feeling the emotions of others despite the fact that they themselves are not going through the same situation.” Of course Tyrelle can do so much more, including forcing unsuspecting people to act on feelings they may not even realize they harbor. But there’s a cost to her…
I also enjoy the way Nalini Singh writes and uses Empaths in her Psy-Changeling series – my favorite book in the series is Shield of Winter, where Ivy Jane and the other empaths play a large role in saving their civilization. (No spoilers.)
Plenty of room in the creative universe for each of us to write our own version of empathy as a gift/curse/power/temptation!
Star Cruise: Outbreak features an alien pet, Midorri, who is kind of a cross between a tribble and a red tailed panda (my favorite animal after cats). I decided to keep her on board the Nebula Zephyr after the events of Outbreak so she could be involved in this Stowaway adventure too, and then as pets and secondary characters often do, she kept becoming more and more integral to the plot and revealing new capabilities I didn’t know about before. I got really fond of my furry little green friend with the six legs!
I realized after I finished the Star Cruise: Stowaway novella that I wasn’t done with the subject of these beautiful, empathic women and their predicament with the Sectors’ organized crime syndicate. I decided to tell a much longer story for Miriell, who is the sister of the Stowaway heroine. For Danger in the Stars I put her in the heart of the Amarotu Combine operation, at the mercy of her violent ‘controller’, and when I asked myself who would be her hero, Conor Stewart appeared. (To be clear, Conor is not the controller.)
She sees good in him, well hidden under the façade of the dangerous hitman and crime boss. He goes out of his way to help her when he can and cautious attraction blossoms between them. Not to give spoilers but there’s much more to Conor than meets the eye. He is a hero!
I made great efforts to ensure I didn’t stray into Stockholm Syndrome territory – where a victim may start to feel affection or emotion toward the captors as a psychological survival strategy. I tried to ensure that both Miriell and Conor stayed clear headed and genuine at all times about what the situation was and that their emotion was trustworthy true love, not an outgrowth of her captivity. Miriell was a high ranking priestess on her own planet and remains pragmatic at all times about those who hold her prisoner, including Conor. But her powers tell her he’s keeping secrets and she can’t help but wonder if her god Thuun has sent him to help her.
It’s not my usual Sectors spaceships and blasters scifi story (although there certainly are some of both elements in the action scenes) but I was really intrigued with telling this tale and exploring a few things about both the empathic priestess (which brings in my element of mysticism that I always like to incorporate) and the stone cold mob hitman, who has to fight his deepest instincts to preserve and protect. When it comes to Miriell, he can’t stand by and let her remain a pawn of the Combine. This is a romance, so the Happily Ever After ending is guaranteed, even if perilous for my couple to attain.
For the next book, Two Against the Stars, I thought it would be interesting to write about one of these captive empaths who manages to get free of the crime syndicate on her own and then is on the run from them and the authorities. I wondered what she’d do if confronted with a situation that required her to risk her own hard-won freedom. Of course that begged the question what the dire situation could be, and it had to involve a hero in jeopardy, since I’m writing romance.
Here’s the description of the eventual story (more about why I wrote certain parts below):
Empathic priestess Carialle has escaped the evil Amarotu Combine, but she’s hardly out of danger. Not when she risks everything to rescue a drugged man from a crooked veterans’ clinic. By lulling the clinic staff to sleep, she reveals her powers. And once again, criminals are after her and her rescuer.
Marcus Valerian, a wounded Special Forces veteran, never expected to have his life threatened by the clinic that’s supposed to help ex-soldiers like him. But when he wakes from a drugged state to find a lovely woman urging him to run–he does. In his family’s remote fishing cabin, he suffers the agony of withdrawal, soothed only by her powers.
In their idyllic hideaway, the two also discover a nova-hot attraction flaring. But can they stay alive long enough for it to become more? Not if the Combine has anything to say–they are not giving up until Marcus is dead and Carialle is their weapon.
Notice in the description that eventually the couple flees to a cabin deep in the woods? When I was a kid, we lived in upstate New York and my family had a vacation place on a lake nearby. The cabin was built from scratch by my grandfather and some of my best childhood memories center around that cabin and the lake, fishing, boating, swimming and hiking. I can even remember bits and pieces of when there was no cabin or even a road at all on our land – we had to hike in through the forest and sleep in tents. (I was really little then.) So I decided to write a version of the cabin into the book, as a safe haven for Carialle and Marcus. The real family cabin was only accessible via a very rough, unpaved road added later, so I exaggerated that situation a bit for the book. And of course my grandfather wasn’t a Special Forces veteran. Actually he worked for Nestle International at that point in time as an executive and wow did he get great gift baskets at the holidays! Despite being in an office nine to five, he had mad skills as a builder and wilderness scout and all round capable guy.
But the cabin, Marcus’s memories and some of the events that transpire there are my tribute to a very happy part of my own childhood. Of course a lot of what’s in the book is purely fictional LOL. To my knowledge our cabin lacked an Artificial Intelligence, a force shield and any subterranean facilities!
When it was time to write the fourth book, The Fated Stars, I wanted a really unique situation. I always feel I owe it to my readers to write a different take on each novel, not just repeat the same setup every time. I started pondering what would have happened to a male empathic priest from their planet of Tulavarra if he’d been kidnapped and forced into working for the crime bosses. My daughters have been challenging me to write a female soldier for several years now and I thought this book was my golden opportunity to write a really kick ass woman mercenary.
Cover artist Fiona Jayde created an alien carnival for me, although you have to look closely to see it on the cover, but I thought that was a fun touch…when I was little we used to go to the county fair and the volunteer firemen’s field days and I especially loved the merry go round. I pulled on those memories a bit when writing about the place where Samell is held prisoner. Of course I never met any aliens – to my knowledge! – at any of the rural fairs I attended as a kid (we did bring home a live duck named Cleveland once but that’s another story), but it was a fun concept to translate to the far future and the rim worlds of civilized space. Very different than anything I’d ever written before.
Writing Larissa, the tough heroine, was exciting because up to that point my major military characters had always been guys. There’s a unique fight scene in the book where she takes on one of the alien Shemdylann in hand to hand combat – no spoilers – and that was a lot of creative fun to think through. I’ve made the Shemdylann so imposing and invulnerable (except to blasters) in all the Sectors novels that now I had the challenge of saying “yes, but Larissa can win this fight because…” and make it believable.
There’s also an interlude where she and Samell have an encounter with an ancient, sentient tree (and its pets, the Amusing Ones) and I drew a bit on how I felt many years ago when my late husband and I took a vacation amidst the giant Sequoias.
I don’t know if I’ll feel the call to write another empath novel but never say never. I do have a plot in mind thanks to my busy Muse…
Star Cruise A Novella: Stowaway: With Star Cruise Rescue and Golden Token Short Stories
June 14, 2019
Why I Wrote STAR CRUISE MYSTERY DANCER
I was beaming this week when a reader recommended Star Cruise: Mystery Dancer to her followers on BookBub. I’m always thrilled when someone enjoys one of my books and is generous enough to take the time to leave a review or a recommendation. Thank you! It also made me think this week’s Friday post should share more about this particular book!
This was my 2018 story for the third annual Pets In Space anthology (PISA), which Pauline B. Jones and I co-created to benefit the Hero-Dogs, Inc., charity which provides service dogs to veterans in need. After the anthology has run its course, then I always republish my story on its own.
I love going back to revisit my interstellar cruise liner, the Nebula Dream, for these PISA stories, as the ship cruises through the futuristic human civilization known as The Sectors. I’ve written a number of books and novellas centered on events aboard the ship now and find the whole cruise setup lends itself to telling a good scifi romance adventure tale. Readers new to my world don’t need to know a lot of backstory to enjoy the events, and for those who have read others in the series, it’s a nice return to see some favorite characters (I hope!). I’m writing my story for this year’s PISA right now in fact.
DepositPhoto
As usual, for DANCER I started with the concept of the pet because that drives my plot for these PISA adventures. For some reason I kept seeing a mental picture of a Siamese cat, but with a third eye. But I’ve done a cat and a catlike alien before, for PISA1, Star Cruise: Stowaway, although Midorri, the alien pet there actually is kind of a cross between a red panda and a tribble who acts like a cat. So I wanted something very different and I started thinking about what if the cat wasn’t actually a real animal at all? I ended up making F’rrh a ‘jenfellini’, which is something like a genie, living in a beautiful lacquered box. Visualize the gorgeous painted boxes that come from Russia.
Then, the tenuous link to Russia reminded me of the whole tragic story of the last Tsar and his family, and how they were murdered but for years rumors persisted one of the children might have survived. Various individuals claimed to be ‘Anastasia’ or another of the siblings, and of course there have been movies and plays written with that theme. I always flash back to the version with Yul Brynner (such an intense actor) and Ingrid Bergman because that movie was one of my mother’s favorites and also left the answer to the question of “Is she or is she not Anastasia?” somewhat open at the end. My daughters loved the animated fantasy version of the tale, with the voices of Meg Ryan and John Cusack, when they were growing up.
So I had the heroine – a possible princess on the run – but how could she fit into the Nebula Zephyr? Since the hero would be one of the former Special Forces soldiers who make up the ship’s security force, I had to be able to make the two interact and fall in love in a situation fraught with danger and suspicion.
I’ve wanted to do a story about the Comettes dance troupe which performs aboard the cruise liners since I wrote my very first published scifi romance, Wreck of the Nebula Dream (a sister ship of sorts to the one I write about nowadays). Dancing is a skill a maybe princess might have at a high level, right? So let her be a new member of the ship’s dance company. I’m a huge fan of the Dallas Cowboys cheerleaders and the Rockettes and othe precision dance teams, so I was able to draw upon my years of watching the reality show “Making the Team” and other documentaries and features on dance teams (plus some imagination of course) to write up Tassia’s audition experiences. Tassia brings her own special knowledge, training and interpretations to what the Comettes do and the audiences love it.
Throw in a fabulous jewel and there was the story…
I also made it clear at the end whether my “Anastasia” was or was not the real deal.
This was my 2018 story for the third annual Pets In Space anthology (PISA), which Pauline B. Jones and I co-created to benefit the Hero-Dogs, Inc., charity which provides service dogs to veterans in need. After the anthology has run its course, then I always republish my story on its own.
I love going back to revisit my interstellar cruise liner, the Nebula Dream, for these PISA stories, as the ship cruises through the futuristic human civilization known as The Sectors. I’ve written a number of books and novellas centered on events aboard the ship now and find the whole cruise setup lends itself to telling a good scifi romance adventure tale. Readers new to my world don’t need to know a lot of backstory to enjoy the events, and for those who have read others in the series, it’s a nice return to see some favorite characters (I hope!). I’m writing my story for this year’s PISA right now in fact.
DepositPhoto
As usual, for DANCER I started with the concept of the pet because that drives my plot for these PISA adventures. For some reason I kept seeing a mental picture of a Siamese cat, but with a third eye. But I’ve done a cat and a catlike alien before, for PISA1, Star Cruise: Stowaway, although Midorri, the alien pet there actually is kind of a cross between a red panda and a tribble who acts like a cat. So I wanted something very different and I started thinking about what if the cat wasn’t actually a real animal at all? I ended up making F’rrh a ‘jenfellini’, which is something like a genie, living in a beautiful lacquered box. Visualize the gorgeous painted boxes that come from Russia.
Then, the tenuous link to Russia reminded me of the whole tragic story of the last Tsar and his family, and how they were murdered but for years rumors persisted one of the children might have survived. Various individuals claimed to be ‘Anastasia’ or another of the siblings, and of course there have been movies and plays written with that theme. I always flash back to the version with Yul Brynner (such an intense actor) and Ingrid Bergman because that movie was one of my mother’s favorites and also left the answer to the question of “Is she or is she not Anastasia?” somewhat open at the end. My daughters loved the animated fantasy version of the tale, with the voices of Meg Ryan and John Cusack, when they were growing up.
So I had the heroine – a possible princess on the run – but how could she fit into the Nebula Zephyr? Since the hero would be one of the former Special Forces soldiers who make up the ship’s security force, I had to be able to make the two interact and fall in love in a situation fraught with danger and suspicion.
I’ve wanted to do a story about the Comettes dance troupe which performs aboard the cruise liners since I wrote my very first published scifi romance, Wreck of the Nebula Dream (a sister ship of sorts to the one I write about nowadays). Dancing is a skill a maybe princess might have at a high level, right? So let her be a new member of the ship’s dance company. I’m a huge fan of the Dallas Cowboys cheerleaders and the Rockettes and othe precision dance teams, so I was able to draw upon my years of watching the reality show “Making the Team” and other documentaries and features on dance teams (plus some imagination of course) to write up Tassia’s audition experiences. Tassia brings her own special knowledge, training and interpretations to what the Comettes do and the audiences love it.
Throw in a fabulous jewel and there was the story…
I also made it clear at the end whether my “Anastasia” was or was not the real deal.
