A new year and a new book

 

Hello everybody and welcome to 2022, the year of Getting Back to Normal. Maybe? I'm sure we're all living in hope.

It's wonderful news for all us astronomy buffs that the James Webb space telescope was launched on 25^th December. It will be a while before we know if all the intricate parts that deploy the telescope's dish have all worked as they should and I guess I won't be the only one with my fingers firmly crossed. If James Webb gives us results comparable to the stunning achievements of the ageing Hubble device, we're in for decades of stunning photos and spectacular science. I can't wait!

On the writing front, after a long hiatus I have finally published a new book.

One hundred years ago the pirate ship Crimson Lady terrorized the space lanes, then she disappeared without a trace, leaving behind nothing but tall tales and legends. Until Tara Wyndham finds an artefact from the lost ship

Rys Kovas made a mistake when he left Fleet to take over his uncle’s tourist business. He jumps at the chance to hire out his luxury yacht to go hunting for a ghost ship with the lovely Tara and her grandfather. But murder, sabotage, and accidents mar their journey.  It’s clear somebody doesn’t want them following the trail. As the danger ramps up Rys suspects there’s more to the mystery of the Crimson Lady than a long-lost spacefarer’s story.

Can Rys, Tara, and her indomitable grandfather unravel the mystery and escape with their lives?

The Search for the Crimson Lady is available at a retail store near you. Select your favorite retailer.

Here's a short taste of what it's all about. Tara is attending a deceased estate sale.

Tara glanced inside one of the boxes and caught a hint of red. She picked up a cracked mug with a picture of a woman in a flowing red dress wrapped around the outside.

Her hands trembled. She knew that design. This was the Crimson Lady, mascot of the famous ship. It was good quality porcelain, with a fine texture, basically white, with a red and gold rim. The handle had broken off and it was cracked, the line running down through the woman's head almost to the base but even so, if it was genuine, if it came from the legendary Crimson Lady, it would be worth… she sucked in a breath… thousands. She turned it over, reading the words on the base. 'Beecher Designs, Kendon.' She didn't know what the symbols meant, but Archimedes, Grandfather's house IS, would be able to find out.

Tara took a couple of deep breaths and tried to look blasé, then went back to Miz Jepson and held up the mug. "How much do you want for this?"

She stared at Tara. "You know it's broken?"

"Yes. But I like the design. We might be able to get it fixed."

She pulled an 'if you say so' face. "Take it. You can have it. I was going to throw it out."

The woman obviously had no idea. Tara smiled, thanked the woman, and forced herself not to hurry out of the house.

This is a brand new Dryden Universe story with new characters, although there is a cameo appearance from Admiral Ul-Mellor. It’s a mystery and a puzzle with a romance thrown in.

I hope you enjoy it.

On another note, I'll be publishing a monthly newsletter. It will be filled with book news, reviews, progress on my latest WIP and similar. Needless to say, you will not be spammed, I won't sell your email address, and you can unsubscribe at any time. If you're interested, here's the sign-up page

 While you're here, if you wish to add to your TBR pile, and you like stories featuring pets, you can't go wrong with this bundle. Here's the link.

As you can see, the bundle offers paranormal, science fiction, and fantasy romances. You just might find something that excites you.

 

 

Portals Has Launched!

This is another special Saturday post to announce that Volume One of the SFR Brigade's free Portals project has launched!

We're excited that three of the Spacefreighters Lounge crew will be featured in Volume One--Donna S. Frelick, Laurie A. Green and Greta van der Rol.

(Spacefreighters Pippa Jay will be included in Volume Three and Sharon Lynn Fisher will be in Volume Four.)

What is Portals?

1. It's FREE!
2. It's a time-saving way to discover exciting sci-fi romance stories
3. There are ten first chapter story samples per volume, each by a different author
4. There will be four volumes

Click the lines below to be teleported over to the Portals site where you can:

• Comment and enter a Monday, May 16th drawing for two $5 Amazon e-gift cards 
• Learn more about Portals
• Meet our Portal Keeper
• Check out the authors -- all 40 of 'em!

OR...if you want to jump right over and grab your free digital copy, you can find Portals at any of these booksellers:

AMAZON  |  B&N NOOK  |  GOOGLEPLAY  |  KOBO  |  iBOOKS 

and now available at:

ALL ROMANCE e-BOOKS  |  SMASHWORDS

Portals: Gateway to the Worlds of Science Fiction Romance

DIVERSITY IN SFR II: SEEING THE FUTURE WITHOUT BLINDERS

BLADE RUNNER's vision of Asian-dominated future L.A.

New co-blogger Greta van der Rol’s meaty first post on diversity in SFR gave us all a lot to think about. I was going to leave a comment, but found I had so much to say, I wanted to carry on the conversation here. 

One of the jobs we do as writers of science fiction is to predict what the world will look like in the future.  We take what we see here and now and project it decades or even millennia out to imagine what life will be like.  But that vision of the future will be disastrously limited if we continue to wear the same blinders we were given by the circumstances of our birth, our culture, our education or our lack of interaction with certain groups.

Sometimes in order to see a truly imaginative future, we need to be able to see the present clearly. We need to open our eyes and take notice. Gene Roddenberry, the creator of STAR TREK, had an agenda with his little television show. His stated aim was to have the bridge of the Enterprise reflect the diversity of the world he saw around him.  This was an outrageous concept at the time, though, as Greta indicated, it seems rather stilted and artificial now. Still, Roddenberry’s vision made a great deal of difference for a huge number of people, simply because he tried to reflect what he saw and project it into an optimistic future.

In the same way, director Ridley Scott took the economic and demographic pulse of the 1980s and envisioned a polyglot future L.A. dominated by Asian cultures for his classic SF thriller BLADE RUNNER. (How much of that was adapted directly from Phillip K. Dick’s original vision in the short story that served as the basis of the movie—“Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?”—I don’t remember. What is certain is that Scott made it visual--and unforgettable.) He looked into the future and he did not see the “American” culture as we knew it then—white, Anglo-Saxon and Protestant. He could already see the change.

In the Interstellar Rescue series universe that I’ve created, a slave-trading empire has stolen humans from Earth for generations. For nearly as long, the Rescue abolitionists have been fighting them, freeing slaves and returning them to Earth when they can.  Freed slaves who could not be returned have established colonies throughout the galaxy. Many of them are people of color, primarily of Asian and Indian extraction.  Why? Because the reality is they make up the greatest proportion of the Earth’s population.

So when I set out to recruit a crew for Sam Murphy’s pirate ship Shadowhawk for Book Three in the series (the space opera noir Fools Rush In), I drew from several compatible alien races (they had to be able to share atmosphere and basic foodstuffs, after all) and included lots of crew members with Asian and Indian last names.  Sam might be Caucasian, but the heroine of the story, Rescue agent Rayna Carver, is of African-American descent, the daughter of a couple Taken from outside Chicago and freed by Rescue.

Making my crew diverse was a calculation based on extrapolation—a reflection of current reality projected into my future. The fact that Rayna Carver is black is something else entirely.  She was born that way.

Rayna has been with me since Book One in the IR series, Unchained Memory, where she first appears as “Dozen” on the mining planet of Gallodon V. She leapt onto the page in all her energetic, scene-stealing glory and would not be silenced. I had very little to do with it.  My only job was to write it all down and try to be true to her character in all I did.  That hasn’t always been easy, but I do have my critique partner Linda Thomas and the members of the Cultural Expressions Book Club of Richmond, Virginia to keep me straight if I stray.  Did I mention they’re African-American?  

I had that advantage in writing Rayna’s character. I spend time with people who look like Rayna; I listen to them talk; I share their concerns. I might have been more intimidated if I set out to write, say, a Russian character. He might have ended up sounding like Boris Badenov. Or Chekov.

The one saving grace we have as writers of SFR is that the cultural identifiers that exist between groups today will largely be washed away in the future. Rayna doesn’t have the same cultural referents that her American parents had—she was raised in a colony of freed slaves and aliens called Terrine. But her strength, her courage, her smartass attitude? Yes, some of that we can attribute to generations of her ancestors who survived anything life threw at them.

Those qualities make Rayna the best character for the job. That’s the beauty of embracing diversity: it gives you so many more options to choose from. Why limit yourself or the future you’re building? Look around you. See the world with all its strengths and weaknesses, shades and variations, tongues and dialects. Project that into the future and see how far it takes you.

Cheers, Donna

NEW SFR ADVENTURE: CRISIS AT VALIDOR

Today, Spacefreighters Lounge is honored to host special guest Greta van der Rol as she announces the release of the newest Science Fiction Romance novel in her series.

__________________________________________________

I am delighted to announce the release of the fourth book in my Ptorix Empire series, Crisis at Validor.

The books are set in a universe where much of the galaxy is controlled by the Ptorix, a decidedly non-humanoid species which prefers the same sort of worlds we humans do. Although most planets are either Ptorix or human, some have mixed populations, formed as the political balance ebbed and flowed. Validor has a mixed population. The planet has two continents and its inhabitants have agreed that humans will live on one and Ptorix on the other.

The book is set after the events chronicled in the two Iron Admiral books, where the Ptorix suffered a defeat at the hands of the human Confederacy. But the aftermath of war is often resentment on one side and over-confidence on the other. Again, local politics is a different animal to interplanetary politics, with both species having its internal struggles for power.

Brett Butcher, who was Grand Admiral Saahren's adjutant in the Iron Admiral books, gets his own story in this book. Readers will also get to meet the Ptorix as individuals, and not just the enemy. And we meet the dragon-like berzhani, who become involved in a Ptorix-human conflict whether they like it or not.

I can promise you rip-roaring, fast-paced adventure intertwined with a love story.

Here's a short excerpt.

Brett just stood there. Maybe he didn't really want to come. Maybe he was just… Tarlyn didn't know. Back then, he would have come on an adventure just to please her. Now, she wasn't so sure.

"Are you coming?" she called.

He turned, hesitated long enough to say, "Yes," then eased himself off the jetty into the boat, which swayed slightly under his weight. "It's been a long time since I went boating, and it wasn't on the ocean."

"Can you swim?"

He grinned. "You know I can swim."

Yes, she did. They'd gone to the beach together. She'd told her parents she'd gone to the library. She chuckled. "Well, I can pilot the boat. I've done it more than once. So I'll play captain."

Blurb
Newly-promoted Captain Brett Butcher is about to achieve his life-long ambition to command a battle cruiser. But before he takes up his new posting, he goes home on leave, hoping to perhaps catch a glimpse of his first love, the unattainable Lady Tarlyn.

When the queen is assassinated in a terrorist attack, Tarlyn’s life is thrown into turmoil when she, too, becomes a target. The last person she expects to rescue her is her childhood sweetheart, Brett Butcher.

As Validor’s Ptorix and human populations face off over a group of islands neither owns, the calls for war grow louder. Torn between love, duty and ambition, Butcher and Tarlyn struggle to prevent an inter-species conflict, while the ember of love that has smouldered for so long bursts into flame. But with planetary peace at stake, both will be forced to choose; love or duty.

Crisis at Validor is available in ebook at Smashwords | Amazon | Barnes & Noble | Apple and in print.

About the Author
Greta van der Rol loves writing action-packed adventures with a side salad of romance. Most of her work is space opera, but she has written paranormal and historical fiction. She lives not far from the coast in Queensland, Australia and enjoys photography and cooking when she isn't bent over the computer. She has a degree in history and a background in building information systems, both of which go a long way toward helping her in her writing endeavours.

You can connect with Greta van der Rol on these sites:
Website 
Facebook 
Twitter

Guest Blogger Greta van der Rol

Today, we're welcoming author Greta van der Rol to Spacefreighters Lounge so she can tell us a little about her new release. Welcome, Greta!  


A womanising admiral

Thanks for having me. I'm celebrating the release of my new novel, Starheart.

Here's the blurb.

She's lost her husband, her best friend is missing. What else has she got to lose?

Slightly shady freighter captain, Jess Sondijk, thought she had her life under control until Admiral Hudson's Confederacy battle cruiser stops her ship to search for contraband. His questions reopen matters she had thought resolved. What if her husband's death on his way back from Tabora wasn't accidental? Jess decides to investigate, while keeping Hudson at arms' length.

While he's attracted to the lovely Jess, Hudson is also concerned about what might be happening on Tabora and how that may involve the Confederacy's enemies.

Jess and Hudson's interests collide in more ways than one. But while Jess is more than willing to put her life on the line to protect what's hers, Hudson must balance the risk of inter-species war at worst and the end of his career at best, in a deadly game of political intrigue, murder and greed. At the end of the day, how much is he willing to lose for the woman he has come to love?

So far, I haven't said much about the male main character and love interest, Admiral Ullric Hudson. I'll let Jess introduce you to him when she first meets him when she's taken over to his flagship, Defender, for interrogation…

The warship's side loomed like an apartment block with a few lighted windows. The cutter aimed for the window with the flashing light and slid into the vessel's interior. A few minutes for the airlock to air up and they were out. Jess sniffed the air. Not even a hint of mustiness or cooking. Their filters were obviously better than Saintly Maid's.

Jess and Santh walked together, the troopers behind them, while Lieutenant Douglas led the way to a transit foyer, where he pressed a button to summon a car.

Jess stared around her at clean, grey walls and floors, and a row of no less than ten lifts. Strewth. The buttons went up to thirty. Thirty levels. This ship was huge. A group of people appeared from a doorway, also heading for the transit foyer. Three senior officers. She fixed her 'not sure why this is happening but I'm being co-operative' expression on her face as they approached.

Well, well, well. The captain, a senior commander and a rather dishy admiral. Tall, thick brown hair, heavy eyebrows over blue eyes that right now were shifting his gaze over her body and most especially down the carefully-judged split at the front of her shirt. She smiled at him, taking care to adjust her hair while she did so. Now what would a Star Fleet admiral be doing at Nordheim?

Beside her, Lieutenant Douglas and the two escorts stiffened to parade ground attention.

The admiral stopped in front of her, still staring. "What have we here, Lieutenant?"

The look in his eye sent a sexy shimmy down her spine. No prizes for guessing what was on his mind right now. And under different circumstances, she wouldn't mind. No, not at all.

"Captain and First Officer of a suspicious ship, Sir. The Saintly Maid. They're here for interrogation."
Jess widened her eyes. "Suspicious ship? Oh, really, Lieutenant, you must have mistaken the Maid for some other vessel."

The admiral grinned. The transit car the senior commander had summoned arrived with a gentle ping. The captain and the senior commander both had their bodies pointed towards the open door but the admiral lingered, gazing down at her.

"Delightful to meet you, Captain…?"

"Sondijk. And equally delightful to meet you, Admiral…?"

"Hudson. Ullric Hudson."

She gave him a long, hard once-over, her gaze traveling slowly down his body and back up to his eyes.

"Welcome to Nordheim, Admiral Hudson."

He chuckled, jerked his head down in a brief nod and followed the two officers into the transit.

A womaniser he might be, but Jess soon discovers Hudson's no fool. His arrival is about to make life very complicated for her as he stirs up matters she thought she'd dealt with, like the death of her husband.

I'll be at http://www.melisseaires.com/blog.html tomorrow for a little bit more about that initial meeting.

To celebrate the release of Starheart I'll be giving a $25 Amazon gift voucher to one person who leaves a comment on any of the blogs I visit until 10th March. So leave a comment here and you'll be in the draw.

Bio
Greta van der Rol loves writing science fiction with a large dollop of good old, healthy romance. She lives not far from the coast in Queensland, Australia and enjoys photography and cooking when she isn't bent over the computer. She has a degree in history and a background in building information systems, both of which go a long way toward helping her in her writing endeavours.

Links:
 http://gretavanderrol.net/
 http://twitter.com/GretavdR
 http://www.facebook.com/Author.Greta.vanderRol