Inspiration! From the Pets In Space® 4 Authors #PetsInSpace

Every year since this incredible idea was hatched by author/coordinator Pauline Baird Jones along with author Veronica Scott in 2016, a new Pets in Space® volume has been unleashed in October, which means...we're in the countdown for the 2019 release!

On October 8th, we'll be treated to a brand new collection of the super popular pet-themed science fiction romance tales. Better yet, many of these stories are connected to exciting SFR series. I was lucky enough to get a sneak peak at some of the stories and I can tell you they are amazing!

But how do the authors come up with these wonderful stories? You might wonder what sparks of imagination fueled these pet-enhanced SFR adventures. Today, we have many of the bestselling, award-winning PISA4 authors here to talk about what inspired them to write their stories! Enjoy!

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S.E. Smith
Madas' Falling Star: A Lords of Kassis Novel

Sometimes a character(s) capture your imagination and just won’t let go. In the case of Madas and Gril, these two characters not only capture my imagination, they wormed their way into my heart. I knew when Madas started to share how she and Gril met that I needed to write their story—and I’m thrilled to share it with everyone in PiSA4. Discover love among the stars with the help of a mischievous little lizard named L’eon!

S.E. Smith is an internationally acclaimed, New York Times and USA TODAY Bestselling author of science fiction, romance, fantasy, paranormal, and contemporary works for adults, young adults, and children.

S.E. Smith's Website
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Pauline Baird Jones
Cyborg’s Revenge

Sometimes facing the past is the only way to have a future. In Cyborg’s Revenge, that is what Ale and Rap are trying to do: face their past to find a future, not just for themselves but for their shipmates. But it is a big pile of past to face—more even than they realize. I think my inspiration—or perhaps the underpinning?—for this story came from me returning to my home turf after over thirty years away. Just like my characters, its been a journey of discovery—and rediscovery.

USA Today Bestselling author Pauline Baird Jones never liked reality, so she writes books.

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Cassandra Chandler
Import Quarantine

Marq showed up in my head early on while writing The Department of Homeworld Security. He’s an elite soldier who’s had his emotions suppressed by his government. Their control slips when he discovers he isn’t genetically engineered like every other member of his society—and that he has an identical twin brother, Dane. I knew Dane would work to try to restore Marq’s emotions, and what better way to help his brother learn to love than to have Marq care for a pet? Once the idea of this stern, battle-hardened warrior tenderly caring for an Earth cat—and absolutely losing it when he’s worried about her—entered my head, I knew I couldn’t resist exploring it. And thus, Import Quarantine was born.

Cassandra Chandler uses her vivid imagination to make the world more interesting, spawning the ideas she turns into her whimsical Science Fiction romcoms and darkly evocative Paranormal and Urban Fantasy Romances.

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Tiffany Roberts 
Entwined Fates (The Infinite City)

Writing short is a challenge for us, and to write a believable romance within a limited number of words is even more difficult. I’ve always loved the childhood sweetheart troupe, so I thought this would be the perfect opportunity for us to write one. Toss it in the sci-fi genre, and the possibilities are endless! So, we decided to create characters in our series, The Infinite City. As for our pet, we wanted something really neat and unique, and as soon as Veronica Scott asked us if we’d like to join in for the fourth anthology, I knew I wanted something strange, something that could shape change. My immediate thought was of the microbots from the movie Big Hero Six and how they flowed and moved—and from that base, Cypher was born.

Tiffany Roberts is the pseudonym for Tiffany and Robert Freund, a husband and wife writing duo who write sci-fi and fantasy romance, creating happily-ever-afters for the alien and unknown.

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Veronica Scott
Star Cruise: Idol’s Curse

I’ve always been fascinated by the legends of the 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. 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.

USA Today Best Selling Author Veronica Scott grew up in a house with a library as its heart. Dad loved science fiction, Mom loved ancient history and Veronica thought there needed to be more romance in everything.

Veronica Scott’s Blog
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JC Hay 
Heart of the Spider’s Web

Heart of the Spider’s Web grew out of a pair of loves for me – Firefly and domestic reptiles. Firefly, problematic as it can be, sets up an intriguing kind of found family, and this story (and the TriSystems: Smugglers stories to follow) allow me to explore similar themes with the crew of the Sentinel. It also gives me a chance to show the underside of the somewhat rosier view of the Systems that my Rangers get to have, while still bringing these ruffians a happy ending. As for the other inspiration, it’s been a while since I had a herp in the house (it’s all dogs now), but once upon a time I had an inherited green iguana for more than a decade, and a tokay gecko for nearly as long. Both were far more interesting pets than I ever would have expected, and the ‘goanna’ in my story—Darcy—owes a lot of his mannerisms to these two scaly critters who blessed my life for a while. In a way, this one’s a bit of a tribute to them both, lending them a bit of immortality. Hopefully Darcy will touch your heart, the way my herps warmed mine.

JC Hay writes about heroic hearts, both human, canine, and reptilian, in a fantastic future.

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Regine Abel
Doom

Doom is the prequel to my Xian Warriors series. Even as I wrote Legion, the first book in the series, I knew that the story of how it all started needed to be told. It was a stock photo with men in a fetal position inside giant glass spheres and wires coming out of their spines that first inspired the world of the Xian Warriors. It vaguely reminded me of The Matrix, and I’d always wanted to write a book about some form of transfer of consciousness, but in the real world, not a virtual one like in The Matrix. Thus were born the Soulcatchers and the Xian Warriors.

Regine Abel: Sci-fi and paranormal romance with the twist you never saw coming.

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Kyndra Hatch
Interrupting Starlight

I can’t pinpoint any one thing that inspired Interrupting Starlight. Survival situations have always fascinated me. Since the setting for my Pets In Space® 3 story, After The Fall, was a frozen world with life, even if dangerous life, I wanted to explore the opposite. What would it be like to survive on a completely desert world devoid of life? Then throw the character on a spaceship with every amenity. And I love writing spaceships, especially sentient ones. The inspiration of Interrupting Starlight comes down to two things: deserts and spaceships, enemies to lovers, and the fated mates bond that ultimately ties the characters together. Okay, so that’s four things, LOL. I just love writing science fiction romance with all the creative things that can be done in the genre.

Kyndra Hatch writes action-packed science fiction, fantasy, and paranormal romance stories when she’s not watching for falling stars and avoiding wily coyotes at her desert home.

Kyndra Hatch's Blog
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Alexis Glynn Latner
Winter's Prince

Prince the genetically engineered unicorn shows up in my novel Witherspin, to be published in late 2019. Prince lives in a nature park inside the spinning interstellar city-state called Wendis. In Witherspin, Wendis holds a huge interstellar festival celebrating the Ascendance, that long-ago age when humanity left Earth on rockets and finally starships. For a new Pets in Space® story I got the notion of Wendis having a smaller, warmup fair even more like today’s Renaissance Festivals. Taking place a thousand years from now and ten thousand stars from Earth, though, it would have a lot less to do with history than myths and legends! Prince fit right in. It turned out that, like mythical unicorns, he even has a special affinity for women who aren’t pair-bonded. In “Winter’s Prince,” he helps two women each find their true love—while our heroines and heroes battle a criminal smuggling ring that has invaded the Winterfair.

Alexis Glynn Latner writes tales of romantic adventure that touch readers’ hearts and their minds as well.

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Anna Hackett
Dark Guard

My story is part of my new spin-off series Galactic Gladiators: House of Rone. All the House of Rone gladiators are cyborgs, each one of them augmented in different ways and struggling to understand the emotions our heroines from Earth inspire in them. I knew I also wanted a cyborg pet, so enter Cat--an augmented and enhanced cyborg feline with a penchant for meddling and matchmaking.

Anna Hackett is a USA Today bestselling author who's passionate about action romance.

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Laurie A. Green
SpyDog

This is the third story I've written for a Pets in Space® collection, and it's a third StarDog story in my Inherited Stars Series. The first two both alluded to the crafty little bioengineered canine-feline-weasel-mongoose ship's mascots also being deployed as spies to help defeat the evil Ithian Alliance. SpyDog gave me a chance to explore one of these upgraded StarDog's capabilities--as well as lovableness--as she becomes a conduit between her agent/handler, Rigel Blackline, and his "captured" enemy asset--a legendary warrior class Rathskian female. But I had another big motivation to write this story. The StarDogs are all named after my real life pets--miniature longhaired dachshunds--and once Katrina and Luna had their own StarDog stories, I promised Maura that someday I'd write a story for her, too. When I was invited back to join the talented authors of Pets in Space® 4, "someday" came a lot sooner than I'd anticipated. I hope readers love getting to know the spirited little StarDog named Maura in SpyDog, who takes after her real life inspiration in many ways. Especially in how much she loves belly rubs!

Laurie A. Green is an award-winning, USA TODAY bestselling author, and one of the hosts of Spacefreighters Lounge.

Laurie A. Green's Website
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Pets in Space® 4 Releases on October 8, 2019!

10% of all pre-order and first month's profit will go to benefit

Hero-Dogs, a non-profit that raises, trains and provides

service dogs to disabled veterans and first responders.

Pre-Order Pets in Space® 4 Now!

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***** SPECIAL BONUS! *****
As a big thank-you to the readers who 
stopped by Spacefreighters Lounge today, 
we'll be selecting a random name from
those who comment below to receive 
a rare, print version of
Pets in Space® 2: Embrace the Romance!

Comment below to enter the drawing!
Then check back next Monday,
September 30, 2019 
on this blog or on our
FB Pets in Space® Readers Group
to find out who won.