PUBLICATION DAY ONE: THE GILDED SCARAB

PUBLICATION DAY!

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Available now from

Dreamspinner Press (ebook)

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Amazon.com

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All Romance ebooks

Dance With The Devil - JD March on how everyone wants to be a cowboy...

Friend and writer JD March publishes Dance With The Devil TODAY. Read all about it at my website 

But as a taster: Johnny Fierro’s a gunfighter‚ maybe the best. He’s hunted trouble and a reputation all his life. But the killings and the range wars have worn him out and brought him to a point where he would welcome death — until he hears that his estranged and hated father faces a battle to hold onto his land in the Cimarron Valley. Fierro has sworn to kill his father and this is too good an opportunity to miss. What he hasn’t bargained for is a share of the ranch‚ or a brother he never knew existed. While his upright‚ authoritarian father and Harvard-educated brother struggle to come to terms with his violent past and vicious reputation‚ Fierro wrestles with the unwelcome realization that his mother didn’t tell him the whole story about the past. He doesn’t know what to believe‚ but he has to make a choice when the bullets start flying.

AvailableTODAY  at Five Star Publishing

Launch all space ships! We have a date!

That’s the likely publication date for the first Taking Shield book, Gyrfalcon.

I am beyond excited. Ridiculously so! It feels real again, after the inevitable time of waiting in the editing queue. Well, I still am in the editing queue but soon, my pretties, soon.

I’m not entirely sure what to expect when the editing starts. The two short stories I’ve had professionally edited had very little changed. Commas, mostly. I think I over use them so I strike the wriggly little tadpoles down. The editor tuts at me and puts them back. I’ve never had a content edit done and I am rather nervous. I can only hope the editor loves Bennet and Flynn as much as I do.

Anyhow, for those of you who are unfamiliar with Shield (that is, those of you I haven’t managed to bore witless about it yet), let me tell you a little about it.

Shield is set in an alternate universe where Earth’s a dead planet, dark for thousands of years; lost for so long no one even knows where the solar system is. Her last known colony, Albion, has grown to be regional galactic power in its own right. But its drive to expand and found colonies of its own has threatened an alien race, the Maess, against whom Albion is now fighting a last-ditch battle for survival in a war that’s dragged on for generations.

It’s not certain anyone has ever seen a true Maess. They have seen drones: cyborgs animated by a small neural node of organic cells. The first drones the humans met (more than a century previously) were not humanoid in shape but, as the war progresses, the Maess start to produce human-shaped drones.

Taking Shield charts the missions and adventures of Shield Captain Bennet, scion of a prominent military family. Bennet, also an analyst with the Military Strategy Unit, will uncover crucial data about the Maess to help with the war effort. Against the demands of his family’s ‘triple goddess’ of Duty, Honour and Service, is set Bennet’s relationships with lovers and family. When the series opens, Bennet is at odds with his long term partner, Joss, who wants him out of the military and back in an academic, archaeological career. He’s estranged from his father, Caeden, who is the commanderof Fleet’s First Flotilla. Events of the first book, Gyrfalcon, in which he is sent to his father’s ship to carry out an infiltration mission behind Maess lines, improve his relationship with Caeden, but bring with them the catalyst that will destroy the one with Joss: one Fleet Lieutenant Flynn, who, over the course of the series, develops into Bennet’s main love interest

Over the Taking Shield arc of six novels, Bennet will see the extremes to which humanity’s enemies, and his own people, will go to win the war. Some of it is not pretty.

The next big step after editing will be the cover design, I think. Sadly, I don’t think it will look like this. But a girl can hope.

Grins at you all.  Writing is fun, isn’t it?

Stranded with Louise Lyons

Over at the website, Louise Lyons is visiting to talk about the new anthology from Wayward Ink Press, "Stranded", and gifts us with an extract from her story in the anthology, One Snowy Night. Come and read all about it!

Twirling A Moustache: Sarah Madison and "Walk A Mile"

Come to my website where I interrogate Sarah Madison on her moustache twirling and shake a sad head at her lack of technical ability with computers... More seriously, come over to find out a little more about her brilliant new best seller, Walk a Mile and read a sexy little excerpt...

Quenching the fiery darts

Over at my website I'm talking about parakeets and pantomime moose. All in the same post as promising you exciting authors stopping by to talk about their books and squee-ing about Dreamspinner starting work on the cover art for The Gilded Scarab. Not bad for a Monday!

Wet Wet Wet

Over at my website, I'm hosting Kim Fielding on her Fieldingpalooza blog tour to promote her five--count 'em!--FIVE new releases. There are nymphs and kelpies and THREE prizes to be won! Come and see.