#SampleSunday - Fortune's Hero

The print and digital versions of Fortune's Hero are now available for purchase online and - hopefully - in a store near you, and for the occasion, here is a teaser you won't find anywhere else on the internet. It's from somewhere in chapter 3 or 4, IIRC.

Quinn wrenched himself out of the memory, grimacing, just in time to see the Rhenian med tech drop the gray dress on the ground. There was no red lace here; she wore simple white synthetics under her clothes; what Josie used to call granny-wear.

 He made sure his grin was as offensive as he could make it when he addressed her. “Keep going, sweetheart. It all has to come off. Every stitch. Even the shoes. And toss those over here while you’re at it.”

 He used the pistol to point to the lab coat and dress on the ground.

 Her eyes flew to his, and he could see the consternation in their depths. Maybe the tracker was in the pocket of the coat. Or somewhere in that sorry excuse for a dress. If so, he could make her stop now. Save them both from this uncomfortable parody of a striptease that neither of them enjoyed.

 He lowered the pistol to his lap. “Tell you what. You tell me where the tracker is, and I won’t make you take off any more. Just give it to me, and you can put your clothes back on.”

 Her gaze flickered. Surprise? Or fear?

 For a second, he thought it might be easy. Then—

 “There is no tracker.” The med tech’s voice was low, and those green eyes he’d thought were devoid of feeling, were filled with resignation. Quinn felt himself waver—just give her her damn clothes back and let her get dressed again!—but then he hardened his resolve. He’d been fooled before; that’s what had gotten him into this fix in the first place. You just couldn’t trust a woman, especially a beautiful one.

 “Guess you’ll just have to take off the rest then, sweetheart. And toss’em to me as you go. Starting with those.”

 She hesitated before bending to pick up the lab coat and gray dress lying on the ground. Then she hesitated again, holding them.

 “Coat first.”

 She threw it from a few feet away, and it landed in a puddle at his feet. Quinn picked it up, noticing in passing the stiffness of the sleeve, where the guard’s blood had dried during their walk. There was a corresponding stain on her forearm, bright against the pale skin. The coat had shiny metal buttons, and he’d have to smash each one of those to make sure something small wasn’t hidden inside. There was also a patch of some sort sewn to the breast pocket, that he’d have to investigate further.

 “Now the dress.”

 She didn’t want to give it to him, that much was clear. She was clutching it, but not—he thought—to cover herself. There wasn’t anything to cover. The underpants left everything to the imagination, while the top—a camisole?—covered her from hips to shoulders.

 He laced his voice with amused contempt. “C’mon, sweetheart. You’re making it harder than it has to be. Ain’t like I’m enjoying the show, you know.”

 Her hands fumbled with the gray fabric. A moment later, the dress came flying at his face.

 He got his hand up in time to bat it away, at the same time as he braced himself for the expected attack.

 When it didn’t come, he focused his eyes on her again, and saw why. She hadn’t moved from her place on the dusty ground, but now she was clutching a knife, one she must have had in the pocket of the gray dress.

 No wonder she hadn’t wanted to let go of it.

 

* * *

 

 

There you have it. A tiny tidbit of Fortune's Hero. The book is available through Amazon and BN right now, at a slight discount off the sales price of $5.99. Amazon had it at $4.99 the last time I looked, and BN at $5.09. The print version, at least on Amazon, is $9.19; 39% off the cover price of $14.99. And the print book is gorgeous! Either way, not a bad deal for 95,000 words of action-adventure and romance in a galaxy far, far away. 

D-DAY!

Just a super-quick note to let you know that a box of FORTUNE'S HERO arrived on my doorstep this morning, looking gorgeous.

I checked the web, and lo and behold, the Kindle and Nook versions of the book are on sale. No print copies yet, it seems, but I'm sure they're coming, since I got mine.

At the moment, the Kindle version is 20% off the retail price of $5.99 - so $4.79 - while the Nook book is 15% off, or $5.09. Either way, not a bad price for more than 95,000 words of - if I do say so myself - brilliance.

The print cover price is $14.99, just so you know. Trade paper size. Nice big book.

Anyway, as you were. :)

Space guys are hot

A couple weeks ago was invited to contribute to an article someone was writing on - I quote - "the duality of Science Fiction and Romance that makes SFR such a great mixed genre."
 

Since I've started writing SFR - science fiction romance, what I've been calling my futuristic science fiction space opera romance thingy - I couldn't resist.

The article is HERE, including a quote from me - in the same paragraph as the fabulous Linnea Sinclair (who's so much more eloquent than me, and who's also been writing this thing called SFR for years).

But I had a lot more to say about the duality of SF & R than what made it into the article, and I thought I'd put it all here, since it makes me sound slightly less shallow than the reference to hot space guys may make you think I am.

Here's my quote - the entire thing - as sent to Heidi:

The way I see it, science fiction has traditionally been a male genre, with more male writers and more male readers. (Please note that I'm not saying "only," because there are certainly some fantastic female science fiction writers out there, and quite a few female science fiction readers too. But the genre is more heavily weighed toward men, I think, probably because of the science aspect. And the weapons. Boys like their weapons. )

By the same token, romance is traditionally a female genre. Some men write romance, and some men read it, but primarily, it appeals more to women.

SFR, then, becomes a fusion of the two, with - one hopes - appeal to both. It's equally balanced between the traditionally male interests - science, weapons, military - and the female - love and relationships. Science fiction is kind of like the old-fashioned western. SFR is the futuristic western romance, only without the horses. You have the traditional outlaw hero, larger than life, gun on his hip, chasing down the bad guys and able to - quite literally - change worlds.

 

Except the damsel in distress, tied to the railroad tracks, isn't always in distress in SFR; sometimes she's the hero. It's the future, after all, and women don't have to abide by 19th century rules for proper behavior. And let's face it: space guys are hot, you know? Han Solo? Mal Reynolds?

 

So what do you think? Do you see any similarities between science fiction and westerns, or for that matter between SFR and western romance? And most importantly, do you think space guys are hot? 

A new frontier

Some of you may remember having heard me yap on about what I call my "science fiction futuristic romance space opera thingy" ... for lack of a more focused term.

I developed the idea more than a year ago: first in a piece of flash fiction my Working Stiffs blog buddy Wilfred Bereswill challenged me to write, after I told him I can't write anything short; and secondly in a class I took with the fabulous Heather Graham last fall. I was told by a lot of people it would be a hard sell, and that I probably shouldn't put too much effort into it... but to be honest, I had a hard time letting it go. Characters sometimes dig into your brain and refuse to give up, even when you know you should push them outta there and let them shrivel and die in the harsh light of real life.

In this case I didn't even try. Quinn's just one of those special people. I did my best to ignore him when I had other things to do, but I never made a concerted effort to get rid of him. Once in a while I'd even let him come out and play for a while.

Fast forward about a year: a month or so ago, I was yapping to another friend about it - the wonderful Misa Ramirez, author of the Lola Cruz mysteries from St. Martin's Minotaur and the Enchanted Dressmaking mysteries from NAL, as well as the marketing director for a new boutique publisher called Entangled Publishing ... and long story short, Misa asked to see the outline for the book. Then she asked if she could show it to one of the editors. And then she said the editor wanted a formal proposal for the series.

(Yes, in playing with the idea, it had morphed into a series. I told you I can't write anything short.)

And now I am extremely excited to be able to report that I have signed a four book contract for a series of sci fi romances about the crew of a space freighter called the Good Fortune. There'll be adventure, there'll be sex, there might be a little mystery and definitely some suspense, and hopefully some of you who read my mysteries will give these books a try as well. They're not very science fiction-y, I promise. They just happen to be set in a galaxy far, far away, but for all intents and purposes, they could take place right here on our own planet, as well. They're character books, just like the rest of what I write. Only, instead of - say - five mysteries making up one long romance, like the Cutthroat Business books, this is four romances making up one long adventure.

Check out the short outline for book 1, Fortune's Hero, scheduled for release sometime in 2012:

 To ensure their survival on a hostile planet, an escaped prisoner and his hostage must forge a partnership that changes them from enemies to reluctant allies and – eventually – to lovers.

Last year, space smuggler Quinn Conlan was on top of the world. He had everything a man could want: a fast ship, a great crew, a gorgeous girlfriend, lots of money, and adventure and excitement around every corner.

That all changed when he agreed to ferry a shipload of weapons to the beleaguered planet Marica, currently under siege by Rhenian forces. Now he’s stuck in a prison camp on the moon Marica-3, subjected to weekly sessions with the camp’s “medical team,” and praying for a quick death before he breaks under the torture and spills everything he knows about the Marican resistance.

When the opportunity presents itself, Quinn takes a Rhenian med tech hostage and heads into the inhospitable interior of the small moon. There, he has to keep himself and Doctor Elsa Brandeis safe from the deadly flora and fauna, as well as hidden from the prison guards searching for them, all while formulating a plan for getting his crew out of prison, his ship out of impound, and everyone out of orbit.

But when Elsa professes her love, can Quinn take the beautiful doctor at her word, or will trusting her—and his heart—condemn him and his crew to an eternity on Marica-3?

All that's left now is to write the book... after I finish the revisions on DIY-6 and the last half of A Done Deal. :-)

Changing Worlds

I wrote this for the Working Stiffs a few months ago, about one of my favorite book characters. He doesn't qualify as a hunk, exactly - a little too short, for one thing - but he's still one of the best written, best realized, most amazing heroes out there, and I have a feeling that if we ever met, I'd probably develop a heck of a crush. How could you not?

Without further ado:

One of my favorite writers of all time has a new book out, in one of my favorite series, about one of my all-time favorite characters.
The writer is Lois McMaster Bujold, and the novel is called CryoBurn. It’s the last in a long line of semi-soft science fiction books known as the Vorkosigan Saga, set on the planet Barrayar in the year 3000-odd. The first few books, Shards of Honor and Barrayar, are about Aral Vorkosigan and his wife Cordelia, and then in The Warrior’s Apprentice, their son Miles takes over. And I mean that in the most literal way.
Miles is one of those characters who do that. As a recent review for CryoBurn says – you can go on Amazon and read it yourself – “Like many a Miles novel before it, it’s a fast-paced adventure wherein Miles happens to people, and their lives (and worlds) are skewed in his wake.”

I read that, and it got me to thinking about my own characters. Do they do that? Do I write the kinds of characters who happen to people, and who change lives and worlds as a result?

It’s not the first time I’ve heard that sentiment expressed as relates to Miles, by the way. A character in one of the books says much the same thing. “I’ve had many subordinates over the years, who’ve turned in impeccable careers. Perfection takes no risks with itself, you see. Miles was many things, but never perfect. It was a privilege and a terror to command him, and I’m thankful and amazed we both got out alive. Ultimately his career ran aground in disaster. But before it ended, he changed worlds.”

All in all, I’m not sure I accomplish the same thing. Oh, my characters are just fine. People seem to like them. They’re strong enough and interesting enough to carry their books. But they don’t change lives and worlds. They’re not iconic. They don’t jump off the page and hit you between the eyes. They don’t make you laugh and cry and think. At least I don’t think they do.

And that’s my fault, for not creating the kind of character who can do that. For taking the easy way out. For skimming the surface and not delving deep to where the real issues are.

We all want our characters to be ‘good,’ don’t we? We want them to come across as beautiful. Even when they have flaws, the flaws tend to be endearing. We do our best to create perfection. But as the quote above says, perfection takes no risks with itself. And compelling characters are all about risk.

Miles isn’t perfect, not by a long shot. Physically, he’s about as far from leading man material as you can get. Less than five feet tall, hunch-backed and bowlegged, he’s reviled by his fellow – ignorant – Barrayarans as a mutant. His own grandfather tried to cut his throat at birth. His mind is brilliant, but his body is crippled, and an obstacle to everything he wants to accomplish. So he tries harder, to the point of obnoxiousness. He’s driven, he’s manic, he’s sometimes suicidal. He screws up all the time. He makes mistakes – and aren’t we all loath to make our characters do that? We don’t want them to look bad. We love them, so we don’t want bad things to happen to them. We don’t want them to embarrass themselves, or look less than – here’s that word again – perfect.

We want people to like them. People who read our books, as well as other characters within our books. We don’t want our protagonists to be unlikeable. So we play it safe. We want their friends and family to love them. Not to try to cut their infant throats. Not to wish them to be other than they are because they’re just too damned embarrassing to be around.

Miles has a cousin named Ivan, who is everything Miles isn’t: tall, handsome, and a ladies man. Miles is a little envious of Ivan, and always has been. Ivan, on the other hand, wouldn’t want to be Miles for anything in the world – and I’m not sure I can blame him. But this passage from the book A Civil Campaign – Miles in love; scary thought – really says it all, if you’ll bear with me. It makes me cry every single time I read it, and I want to share it with you because it says so much, not just about Miles, but about Miles’s effect on the people around him, and about the kind of character that can be created by a writer who isn’t afraid of making their protagonist larger than life and at the same time so very human. This is Miles from Ivan’s point of view, with all his flaws and all his contradictions, with every quality that makes him who he is, and with Ivan’s conflicting emotions about it.

Enjoy. She’s a hell of a writer.

“Damn that smile. Was it Ivan’s fault, that he had been born undamaged while his cousin had been born crippled? No, blast it. It was bloody bungled politics that had wrecked him, and you’d think it would be a lesson to him, but no. Demonstrably, even sniper fire couldn’t stop the hyperactive little git. In between inspiring you to strangle him with your bare hands, he could make you proud enough to cry. At least, Ivan had taken care no one could see his face, when he’d watched from the Council floor as Miles had taken his Auditor’s oath with that terrifying intensity, before all the assembled panoply of Barrayar last Winterfair. So small, so wrecked, so obnoxious. So incandescent. Give the people a light, and they’ll follow it anywhere. Did Miles know how dangerous he was?


And the little paranoid actually believed Ivan had the magic to entice any woman Miles really wanted away from him. His fears were more flattering to Ivan than he would ever let on. But Miles had so few humilities, it seemed almost a sin to take this one away from him. Bad for his soul, eh.”

# # #

 

So what about you? Have any favorite characters who fit the bill? Care to share?