COVER REVEAL: NOT FADE AWAY

Some births come with complications so severe you fear for the life of both child and mother. It’s a fight to bring that creation into the light, and sometimes it takes much longer and a lot more work than expected.

That’s why I’m so excited to announce (finally!) the birth of my latest book baby, Not Fade Away, Interstellar Rescue Book 4. This Earth-based SFR novel, the newest installment in my Rescue series, launches June 12, but is on  pre-order with Amazon now.

Over the next few weeks you’ll have a chance to meet the hero and heroine of Not Fade Away, former Rescue agent Rafe Gordon and home care nurse Charlie McIntye, but today Charlie’s therapy dog Happy takes center stage. Happy is “rescue,” too, in the sense that he was adopted from the local Humane Society shelter, but, like many of his kind, it’s debatable whether Charlie rescued him or he rescued her. 

The cheerful Belgian shepherd mix helps his mistress with her elderly clients and takes an instant shine to Del Gordon, a wheelchair-bound ex-Canadian Mountie with dementia who has recently moved to the small town of Masey, North Carolina to become Charlie’s client. Or, at least, that’s the story Charlie has been told. Even Happy can sense Charlie’s confusion when the old man’s symptoms don’t quite line up with his diagnosis.

Then there is the old man’s son, Rafe. Happy is inclined to like everybody, but he can sense this human’s hesitation. It’s like this guy doesn’t even know how to act around a dog! And, if you ask Happy, the guy likes Charlie entirely too much. What’s worse is that she likes him, too. Ugh!

Finding your way toward family is not an easy task under any circumstances, much less when alien hunters are a constant threat. Good thing Happy is there to protect his new pack. These humans need all the help they can get.

NOT FADE AWAY: INTERSTELLAR RESCUE BOOK 4

Earth shielded his secrets--

Until her love unlocked his heart.

Rescue agent Rafe Gordon is human, though Earth has never been his home. But when his legendary father Del becomes the target of alien assassins, Rafe must hide the dementia-debilitated hero in the small mountain town where the old man was born—Masey, North Carolina, USA, Earth.

Home care nurse Charlie McIntyre and her therapy dog, Happy, have never had such challenging clients before. Del’s otherworldly “episodes” are not explained by his diagnosis, making Charlie question everything about her mysterious charge and his dangerously attractive son. Rafe has the answers she needs, but Charlie will have to break through his wall of secrets to get them.

As the heat rises between Charlie and Rafe, the deadly alien hunters circle closer. The light they seek to extinguish flickers in the gloom of Del’s fading mind—the memory of a planet-killer that threatens to enslave the galaxy.

Cheers, Donna

IF NOT 'MY SECRET ALIEN BABY,' THEN WHAT?

During the discussion that lasted through several posts a few weeks ago here at Spacefreighters concerning a trend toward lurid covers and titles in SFR, I neglected to mention I was having my own little title crisis over Book 4 in my Interstellar Rescue series.

At that time, I was nearing the end of the first draft of the novel, which, for anyone else would be a second or third draft, since I edit as I go. I had a working title, which was everything you don’t want a title to be: vague, dull, tied to nothing in the plot or characters and of no use in determining what kind of book this was. I assumed when I began revisions of the draft, something more exciting would come to me.

Here's a hint: Gen. MacArthur says goodbye.

Well, guess what? I went through the manuscript, actively looking for title hints as I cut slow passages and sharpened dialogue, and . . . nothing. Nada. Zip.

I have a pattern for the titles in my series—three-word song titles, the first of which (Unchained Memory) was slightly modified. But the only song titles that presented themselves for this book steered the reader too much in the direction of romantic suspense or contemporary rather than SFR. Or they applied to the romantic plot and not the external plot (or vice versa). Or they made no sense at all unless you had read the book until the end. (I don’t know about you, but I hate it when I have to really think about how the author came up with that stupid title!)

I played word association games. I asked my walking group. I woke up in the middle of the night and couldn’t get back to sleep. I even considered running a contest to let my readers come up with the title. I’ve never had such trouble performing this basic function of writing life. And even now I worry that people will hate my choice, or not understand it, and won’t buy the book because of it.

Buddy Holly belts one out.

At least I have a plan to help readers with the understanding part. No one will have to spend more than a minute wondering where I came up with this title and what it means to the book they’re about to read, a story about a Rescue agent who brings his ailing father home to Earth to hide him from an alien assassin and falls in love with the extraordinary woman chosen to care for him. They’ll simply open the book and read this:

        “Old soldiers never die. They just fade away.”

                                  --General Douglas MacArthur

         “A love for real, not fade away.”

                                      --Buddy Holly

The title? Not Fade Away: Book 4, the Interstellar Rescue Series, a tribute to the Buddy Holly classic. Maybe not perfect, but it beats Follow the Sun, Daddy’s Home, Down to Earth, Last Starship Home and, especially, My Secret Alien-Fighter Lover.

 Cheers, Donna