Oct 25 2013

Did You Find My Dad? SFR Brigade Presents WRECK OF THE NEBULA DREAM

(The link is here to find this week’s excerpts from novels or WIP written by Science Fiction Romance Brigade group members.)

I thought I’d keep going a bit longer with excerpts from my 2013 SFR Galaxy Award winning novel WRECK OF THE NEBULA DREAM, which is a loose retelling of the Titanic sinking, set in the far future on a spaceliner. Nick Jameson, Sector Special Forces operator, has been awakened in the middle of the night, thrown from his bed by some violent maneuver of the SMT Nebula Dream, which now seems badly damaged. Crew members are nowhere to be seen. He’s gotten a lifeboat loaded with passengers…then he and fellow passengers Mara and Khevan have gone to see if they can rescue some children trapped in a cabin near Mara’s. She’s an interstellar businesswoman, shipping cargo on the Nebula Dream. Khevan is a D’nvannae Brother (think sexy assassin/bodyguard/serves an alien goddess) returning home from an assignment:

Nick and Khevan managed to move some of the lightweight panels out of the way, only to be faced with a tangled pile of circuitry, luggage, clothes and, finally, when they dug far enough, the door to the bathroom, which had been blown inward and warped to block the entrance to the children’s room.

“Paolo, are you okay?” Mara called, as Nick and Khevan took a break to assess the best way to proceed.

“Yes.” There was a pause. “But Mommy’s not awake yet. Gianna’s frightened.”

“Well, she’s a very little girl,” Mara reminded the boy soothingly, exchanging glances with Nick and Khevan. “She’s lucky to have a big brother like you.”

“Did you – did you see my dad anywhere?”

Mara sighed. Taking a deep breath, she answered cheerfully, even while making a sad-faced grimace to Nick. “No, sweetheart, I didn’t find him, but I’ve got the next best thing out here – a Special Forces captain and a D’nvannae Brother. Exactly like in an adventure holo, you know? They came for you and Gianna.”

“And Mommy.” The boy’s voice wavered.

Hand to her mouth, Mara nodded. “Yes, they’re here to help your mother, too.”

Here’s the story:

Traveling unexpectedly aboard the luxury liner Nebula Dream on its maiden voyage across the galaxy, Sectors Special Forces Captain Nick Jameson is ready for ten relaxing days, and hoping to forget his last disastrous mission behind enemy lines. He figures he’ll gamble at the casino, take in the shows, maybe even have a shipboard fling with Mara Lyrae, the beautiful but reserved businesswoman he meets. All his vaporize when the ship suffers a wreck of Titanic proportions. Captain and crew abandon ship, leaving the 8000 passengers stranded without enough lifeboats and drifting unarmed in enemy territory. Aided by Mara, Nick must find a way off the doomed ship for himself and several other innocent people before deadly enemy forces reach them or the ship’s malfunctioning engines finish ticking down to self destruction.

But can Nick conquer the demons from his past that tell him he’ll fail these innocent people just as he failed to save his Special Forces team? Will he outpace his own doubts to win this vital race against time?

This Best Selling Science Fiction Adventure is Available from Smashwords , Amazon Barnes & Noble All Romance eBooks and iTunes Also available from Amazon as trade paperback here

Oct 18 2013

A Rescue Attempt SFR Brigade Presents WRECK OF THE NEBULA DREAM

(The link is here to find other excerpts from novels or WIP written by Science Fiction Romance Brigade group members.)

I thought I’d keep going a bit longer with excerpts from my 2013 SFR Galaxy Award winning novel WRECK OF THE NEBULA DREAM, which is a loose retelling of the Titanic sinking, set in the far future on a spaceliner. Nick Jameson, Sector Special Forces operator, has been awakened in the middle of the night, thrown from his bed by some violent maneuver of the SMT Nebula Dream, which now seems badly damaged. Crew members are nowhere to be seen. He’s gotten a lifeboat loaded with passengers…but he’s had something else on his mind….Mara Lyrae is a woman he met earlier on the cruise and is more than slightly interested in.

Here’s the 200 word excerpt and the story blurb is below the picture:

“Help! I need help – there are people trapped in a cabin on the next level.”

Mara!

Hoping he was right, Nick craned to see who it was. Sure enough, to his great relief, Mara Lyrae came running up to the ring of volunteers at the LB portal. He’d been prepared to search the entire ship for her if necessary, but now here she was.

Sensibly dressed but disheveled, her hair loose around her shoulders, Mara worked her way through the rapidly thinning crowd, gaze locking onto him. “Please, I need someone to come to Level Two.” His men let her through the cordon and she grabbed at Nick’s arm. “I’m so glad you’re still aboard. It’s the family who was on the shuttle with us? I can hear the children crying in their cabin, but I can’t get the door to open far enough to get in. The boy says his mother is trapped under something.” Mara bit her lip, shoving her hair away from her face. “And they can’t get out of the back bedroom, or won’t try.”

After hearing about trapped children, Nick knew he’d stay on board as long as it took to free them. But first, she needs to be safe. “Tell me exactly where on the Second Level and I’ll go. You get in this LB.” Nick reached out to take her by the arm, intending to guide her through the portal.

“No,” She took a hasty step away from Nick, shaking her head vehemently. “I promised that little boy I’d come for them myself, as soon as I found their father, or someone. If you’re going to help me with this, then we have to hurry.”

Here’s the story:

All his plans vaporize when the ship suffers a wreck of Titanic proportions. Captain and crew abandon ship, leaving the 8000 passengers stranded without enough lifeboats and drifting unarmed in enemy territory. Aided by Mara, Nick must find a way off the doomed ship for himself and several other innocent people before deadly enemy forces reach them or the ship’s malfunctioning engines finish ticking down to self destruction.

This Best Selling Science Fiction Adventure is Available from Smashwords , Amazon Barnes & Noble All Romance eBooks and iTunes Also available from Amazon as trade paperback here

Audiobook, narrated by Actor Michael Riffle – Available Now at Amazon and iTunes

Oct 11 2013

SFR Brigade Presents WRECK OF THE NEBULA DREAM Lifeboats

(The link is here to find other excerpts from novels or WIP written by Science Fiction Romance Brigade group members.)

Here’s the 200 word excerpt and the story blurb is below the picture:

The blaring sirens and recorded emergency warnings cut out, resumed briefly and then died away in a slowly fading gibberish. The lights in the corridor flickered, causing gasps here and there in the crowd.

“Are there any SMT officers or crew here?” Nick said.

Desperation, fear, and puzzlement on the faces in front of him. Many sidelong glances, mute head shakes.

Silence.

“All right, then. I’m Captain Jameson, Sectors Special Forces. I’m taking charge of this lifeboat portal. You can’t all get into this LB. No one’s going to make it off unless you keep your heads and we go about this calmly and quickly.” He pointed at some likely candidates. “You gentlemen form a ring. No one gets by until I say so. Watch my back while I open this damn portal.”

The men linked arms and established a perimeter. Nick gave his attention to the locked access. Damn, there should have been at least one SMT crew person at each LB by now, with the unlock code, getting the civilians safely off the ship as fast as possible. Lucky for all these nice people I know how to open the thing.

Nick scanned the portal info display. “Capacity one hundred sentients,” the label declared in Basic and the other five languages. Okay, Jameson, quick, calculate what the limit really means, what the margin of design safety probably was. How many extra oxygen-breathers can I shove onto the thing without killing them all?

Here’s the story:

Traveling unexpectedly aboard the luxury liner Nebula Dream on its maiden voyage across the galaxy, Sectors Special Forces Captain Nick

Jameson is ready for ten relaxing days, and hoping to forget his last disastrous mission behind enemy lines. He figures he’ll gamble at the casino, take in the shows, maybe even have a shipboard fling with Mara Lyrae, the beautiful but reserved businesswoman he meets.

This Best Selling Science Fiction Adventure is Available from Smashwords , Amazon Barnes & Noble All Romance eBooks and iTunes Also available from Amazon as trade paperback here

Audiobook, narrated by Actor Michael Riffle – Available Now at Amazon and iTunes

Oct 4 2013

Science Fiction Romance Brigade Presents Wreck of the Nebula Dream

(The link is here to find other excerpts from novels or WIP written by Science Fiction Romance Brigade group members.)

I thought I’d switch gears this week a bit and excerpt my 2013 SFR Galaxy Award winning novel WRECK OF THE NEBULA DREAM, which is a loose retelling of the Titanic sinking, set in the far future on a spaceliner. Nick Jameson, Sector Special Forces operator, has been awakened in the middle of the night, thrown from his bed by some violent maneuver of the ship. Here’s the 200 word excerpt and the story blurb is below the picture:

The deck pitched violently underneath him, and Nick was thrown the other direction, fetching up against the bed platform shoulder first with bruising force.

Rubbing his shoulder, Nick glared around the cabin. “Ship, what the hell is going on?”

No answer.

The Nebula Dream pitched to starboard, but not as drastically, and then slowly returned to near vertical. Getting cautiously to his feet, Nick grabbed for his scattered clothes, pulling them on as fast as possible.

“Ship, I want status.” Nick fastened his blue shirt as the deck wobbled underfoot again. The engines are down again, for one thing. Determined to wrest some information from someone, he made his way to the interface panel.

Just as he got there, clinging to the molded desk as the ship shuddered again, the image of Captain Bonlors appeared. Flickering once, the holo stabilized. Amazingly, the captain continued to project unshakable calm. If I hadn’t met the man, I’d be wondering if he was nothing but a well-designed hologram. Reassuring to the passengers or not, no one should be this serene while in charge of a ship pitching and rolling in space like the Nebula Dream.

“Again, I must apologize to you, my passengers,” the image was saying. “We have experienced a small malfunction –”

“Not from where I’m standing, pal,” Nick said grimly. “Small is not the word for it.”

VE sez: Need I add the situation goes downhill from there?

Here’s the story:

*********************************************************************************************************

This Best Selling Science fiction Adventure is Available from Smashwords , Amazon Barnes & Noble All Romance eBooks and iTunes

Also available from Amazon as trade paperback here

Audiobook, narrated by Actor Michael Riffle – Available Now at Amazon and iTunes

Sep 27 2013

Science Fiction Romance Brigade Presents Escape From Zulaire

I’m a proud member of the SFR Brigade so I thought this week I’d take part in the weekly excerpts blog hop. (The link is here to find other excerpts from novels or WIP written by group members.) The rule is 200 words or less, so here goes with 200 words of my Best Selling SFR novel ESCAPE FROM ZULAIRE. This scene is when the bad things begin to happen, as they say…(The story blurb is below the excerpt.)

The lights along the path and beside the benches flickered and went out, plunging them into darkness.

Glancing around, Deverane frowned in the moonlight. He released her, keeping one hand around her wrist and putting the other on the butt of his blaster. “Is that normal?”

“The generators have been known to be troublesome in the summer. Probably nothing.” The moment was gone, the spell she’d been under broken. Am I disappointed? Relieved? Things had been moving way too fast between them for people who had just met. “Fortunately, we still have enough moonlight to see the path.” Andi took a step toward the clubhouse.

He tightened his grip on her wrist, forcing her to stop. “Wait.”

Yelling broke out in the large building on the rise behind them. Glaring, sporadic flashes burst from the general direction of the parking area and from the main wing of the celebration hall itself. Making the forest brighter than day, a sizable explosion obliterated the light of the two moons for a moment. Clapping her hands to her ears at the concussion, Andi ducked, crowding into the reassuringly hard-muscled captain.

In one fluid motion, he had his blaster in hand. Still keeping his grasp on her wrist, he drew Andi farther away from the path, taking cover behind a wide, multiple-trunked tree. Placing himself between her and the building, he leaned out, reconnoitering the pathway. The screams and shouts were increasing in intensity and number.

The story:

Andi Markriss hasn’t exactly enjoyed being the houseguest of the planetary high-lord, but her company sent her to represent them at a political wedding. When hotshot Sectors Special Forces Captain Tom Deverane barges in on the night of the biggest social event of the summer, Andi isn’t about to offend her high-ranking host on Deverane’s say-so—no matter how sexy he is, or how much he believes they need to leave now.

Deverane was thinking about how to spend his retirement bonus when HQ assigned him one last mission: rescue a civilian woman stranded on a planet on the verge of civil war. Someone has pulled some serious strings to get her plucked out of the hot zone. Deverane’s never met anyone so hard-headed—or so appealing. Suddenly his mission to protect this one woman has become more than just mere orders.

That mission proves more dangerous than he expected when rebel fighters attack the village and raze it to the ground. Deverane escapes with Andi, and on their hazardous journey through the wilderness, Andi finds herself fighting her uncomfortable attraction to the gallant and courageous captain. But Deverane’s not the type to settle down, and running for one’s life doesn’t leave much time to explore a romance.

Then Andi is captured by the rebel fighters, but Deverane has discovered that Zulaire’s so-called civil war is part of a terrifying alien race’s attempt to subjugate the entire Sector. If he pushes on to the capitol Andi will die. Deverane must decide whether to save the woman he loves, or sacrifice her to save Zulaire.

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(Oh all right, a little promo ~ here are the buy links LOL)