Friday Feature S.B.K. Burns A Far Far Better Thing
Interviews
S.B.K. Burns
Author of
A Far Far Better Thing
Today we are sitting down with S.B.K. Burns for a little chat about her and her book A Far Far Better Thing .
Welcome Susan. Could you please tell the readers about the book that is being showcased today.
I’m excited to share the world of the Goldens with you. Goldens are psychic vampires (the good guys). Their supernatural powers consist mainly of orbweaving—weaving or creating universes out of their imaginations. Legend says they can telepath, teleport, shapeshift, and heal. They also like to save those they come in contact with, whether or not any one of their “victims” want to be saved.
A Far Far Better Thing is a novella I wrote to introduce the world of the Goldens and the young people—humans, Goldens, hybrids and androids—caught up in it.
The Goldens, having returned home from the stars and bound by their prime directive of noninterference with humans, are fleeing the Dacons, spacefaring nasties. They’re also dealing with a revolution by their human-lookalike androids. But the worst threat to their civilization comes from one of their own, Kira. She’s secretly mated with a human and her soon to be born hybrid daughter is much more powerful than the other Goldens and bound to break all their rules. Lucky for Kira, she has an android protector, Max, watching out for her. Except he too has a secret and it isn’t just that he’s fallen in love with her, willing to do anything to keep her and her dangerous child alive.
That sounds very interesting. How did you come up with the concept for this book?
The first two books in this Legends of the Goldens Series were published by Soul Mate: Forbidden Playground and Dancing Dragons. I’ve always been fascinated by science fictions that spoke of societies where two factions complementary talents and yet judge each other as less. On my philosophy website—TheUnionOfOpposites.com—I share ideas coming out of my scientific research and those dealing with the diversity in society. The Goldens have supernatural powers through concentrating their energy, but that exhausts them and they must retreat to their Snow Country in the Arctic to meditate and refresh themselves. Humans are laid back and can chill out. So the Goldens return to Earth to hybridize with humans, hoping to use their powers without exhausting themselves. Kira’s daughter Chastity is the first hybrid, but she is dangerous to the Goldens because she does not follow their antiquated rules.
Now that this book is out what are you working on now? Do you have a release date for this book?
As far as the Legends series is concerned, I’m almost finished with a book about Chastity (Called Love Me. Bite Me.) coming out in a month or two. In this story, Chastity falls for her high school quarterback, Zander, who is determined to join the nasty clan of Dacon vampires by getting bitten the last day of Comic-Con (the vampires have their own comic book stand and human groupies willing to volunteer their time and blood).
I also have a steampunk series coming out soon about an alternate science history where women have a quantum computer/time machine that they use to save the great men of science (Entangled and Fly Like An Eagle)
In 2014, I won the Golden Claddagh Contest (Celtic Hearts RWA Chapter) for my contemporary about tennis, A Perfect Match, which I will self-publish later this year.
When we write our Turning Stone Chronicle we tend to write the story in stages: dialogue first, then go back and put in the different layers—sensory, visceral, emotional, settings. What is does your writing process look like?
Yes, I use the layering process to write. As a teenager, I attended clay sculpture classes where material was added and removed as needed. That’s what I do after letting my characters talk with each other as if they were in a play. Then I add their ID tags and behavioral beats. That keeps me from getting lost in backstory.
What does your revision process look like?
I work about eight hours (4 am until noon) in creating, editing, and promoting my stories each day. Because writing can be a somewhat isolating profession, I submit my WIPs to about sixty people a month for feedback from the three read-and-critique groups which I physically attend.
That’s a lot of readers. Thinking of reading what’s the first book you ever remember reading as a child?
At seven, I snuck The Jungle Book by Rudyard Kipling from my parents’ bookshelf.
What’s the book you are reading now?
After reading Ghost Planet by Sharon Lynn Fisher, I’m now reading her The Ophelia Prophecy. Just like her, I like to play around inside the characters’ minds.
Even if you don’t write with music, what’s in your CD player right now?
When I exercise on my elliptical, I listen to these on my iPhone, imagining my stories set to film: Parachute, E.T., We Run The Night, Vehicle, Poker Face, Moves Like Jagger, Hit Me With Your Best Shot, I Hate Myself for Loving You, Derp, Beat It, and Bad Romance.
We love going to the movies. Do you have an all-time favorite movie that has stuck in your mind or that you’d watch over and over?
Of course, it’s Avatar. I have to admit that adventure films are my thing, especially sci-fi adventures where the audience is challenged to hang in there as the characters jump from one scene in one world to another, never knowing where they might end up.
Obviously you like paranormal or SyFY as we do. So, if you could have one of your characters’ powers what would it be? Why?
My WIP, Flat Spin, a space opera thriller, stars a heroine who, unknown to her, is a space alien who has the power to put people to sleep. What’s attractive to me about this power is its ability to quell disputes before they get out of hand.
Have you written about other paranormal creatures besides those featured in this book? If so what?
The first book I published with Whiskey Creek was a novella called Getting Them Up.
In it a young man, a geeky marine biologist, gets bitten by a sea creature and morphs into an Adonis of a man. Unfortunately, he wakes up on a hospital ship run by giant, green, reptilian women who are more into sucking his toes than making love.
Like us you also seem to write time travel. What’s your favorite time travel method? (i.e. mechanical, natural phenomenon, magic, etc.)
In my steampunk series (not yet published) Ages of Invention, a quantum computer has the ability to take a person’s brainwaves, magnifying and filtering the static, to project the individual into his or her past life.
Why do you like to write time travel?
Time travel into the past allows me to dip my toe into the waters of great historical periods, without jumping in with both feet, a time-consuming and most difficult task.
It’s been a pleasure having you here today. As you say goodbye, can you leave the readers with an encapsulation of your life’s philosophy? (a quote, a verse, a precept you live by or have tried to instill in your children?)
Thanks for having me on your blog, Catherine & Donald. I guess you’d have to call me an incurable romantic. I’m inspired by the sweetly innocent lines Leslie Caron speaks to Louis Jordan in Gigi when she’s encouraged by her aunt to show herself off to her best: “You don’t have to turn yourself inside out for an old friend. It’s just silly.”
Now for a little more about Susan and the book she is featuring with us today, A Far Far Better Thing .
Blurb
Kira, a psychic, a vampire–one of the good ones–has been a very bad girl. She’s run away from the protection of Maxwell, her guardian android, got herself pregnant by a human, and now she wants Max to lie about it.
But androids don’t lie. And if he told the truth to protect her, he’d be dismantled, executed for not properly fulfilling his duties.
Secretly designed as a fully functioning human with supernatural powers, Max has been a very bad android. He’s lied to everyone about everything he is, especially the truth about Kira. If he tells the truth about her pregnancy, her people will kill her unborn child who’s destined to be a dangerous psychic.
Worst of all, Max has fallen in love with Kira and is willing to sacrifice his life for her–a headstrong, yet beautifully delicate young woman who believes him to be her inferior.
Excerpt
Everett had engineered Maxwell, handsome and responsible, with the most vigorous human genes. And for some crazy reason she wished with all her might this male could have been the father of the child she carried.
Of course, as an Everett android, Maxwell had been designed without the necessary equipment for sex or procreation. The bitter taste of what that meant assaulted her. He can never be the father of my child. Nor could he ever be her lover.
“What were you thinking, just then?” Maxwell said, standing at his full height, so tall and masculine and so very close.
Relief washed through her. The android had no talent for reading her thoughts without the help of a device. So maybe he wouldn’t notice her physical attraction to him—a raised heart rate, the flush in her normally very white and colorless cheeks, and the green fluorescing from her emotion-filled eyes. What had she been thinking? He didn’t need psychic powers to read that.
Untrained psychically, Kira would soon take her vows as a Golden elder when her schooling began. The only skill she did possess—for the most part—sometimes blocking others from her thoughts. Silly to feel so intimidated by this harmless servant that the Goldens had programmed to obey any command she might give it.
With his genetics psychically engineered for height and strength, the android functioned as a guardian on her excursions away from the Goldens’ compound. He now stood too close, creating a long shadow eclipsing her in the last light of the sun.
“The Everett androids gave you a great party for your first birthday.” She patted her stomach, trying to change the subject, attempting to counteract the strange and distracting feeling of Arctic springtails hopping around inside her. “Do you think my Golden relatives will do the same for my little Chastity on her first?” She wanted her baby to survive, but feared the Golden elders, if they discovered her secret, would urge her to abort. Had her jitters come from the android’s closeness or her unborn child?
Maxwell forced his lips together inhibiting a smile as he sometimes did in indulging her. He couldn’t, however, keep the laughter from his eyes. “You know I’ve studied your baby’s genetics. She will reach her first birthday. I’ll make sure she’s born healthy. She’ll be safe with me.”
What could he mean? Was he going to monitor the baby for the rest of its gestation? She angled her head, waiting for his further explanation.
Joyful and reassuring, he allowed a smile to curl his lips. Their warmth reached his eyes radiating so much heat that, for a moment, Kira believed the sun, instead of setting, had just risen.
Buy Link http://amzn.com/B00SI9NOX0/
Short Bio
The graduate of more coursework than I want to remember. The wife of the next Bill Gates of alternate energy. The mother of the smartest son on the planet.
Author Website: http://www.susanburnsauthor.com/
Amazon Author Page: http://amzn.com/e/B00GFWV5PQ/
