Winner and Official release day!

And the winner of B Cubed, Book One: Born, from the day the sun stopped shining blog tour is...

Johanna! Congrats, I'll send your prize ASAP!

Thank you everyone who stopped by and I hope you will be back on Tuesday the third for the No Limits blog tour, where you have several chances to win copies of my new futuristic erotic romance, No Limits, now available from Kensington books. Click on the banner to view the original post for rules and the full blog tour schedule. 2012 promises to be out of this world. Happy New Year!

No Limits: Now available wherever books are sold. Buy your copy for NOOK or Kindle today!

The Day the Sun Stopped Shining Blog Tour

Click photo to buy B Cubed on Kindle.

Cassandra’s Journal

November 15, 2011

 The new doctor said I need to keep a dream journal, to keep track of my visions. He doesn’t understand they come all the time, whether I’m awake or sleeping. I agreed because I had to, but what he doesn’t know is that I am keeping two. One is make believe, all about ice cream and pony rides, boys I like and mean kids at school. Normal stuff—things he wants to see because then he’ll say I’m fixed and won’t call CPS on Mom and Daddy.

 This one is about what I really see. The darkness, the burning buildings and the enormous deserts. In my dreams the Earth doesn’t spin anymore, a machine made it stop, and billions of people spun off into space. Those who remain are nomads, following the darkness so they don’t die from exposure. Using artificial light sources, they set up farming communities near the few freshwater lakes that have not been swallowed up by the polar oceans.

Usually, I float over the scorched landscape, the one great supercontinent surrounded by the two polar oceans. I see the piles of bleached bones on the light side, they span for miles, stretching back through time. Then, I find the survivors. They live in small clusters, the Born colonies as they call themselves. They are the descendants of those that did believe the prophesy and went deep underground. The Bred do all the work though, people grown like crops. The Born are too few, too important to do manual labor. They must carry on their lines and police the Bred.

 Last night’s dream was different though. I’ve never been in the dream before, but this time I viewed the world through the eyes of a man. He was tired and sweaty, but his fingers had turned almost blue with tilling a new field for planting. Since the world is dark for half the year there are no real seasons anymore. Light and dark, hot and cold. Crops are grown year round inside plastic tents.

 His job was to prepare the hard ground to take seeds after the structure was enclosed. The shovel burrows into the soil and clangs against something hard. He looks around, but he is the last one left, having given up his meal privileges for one of the children. The Breds must earn their food through work, but he has skipped many earned meals to help feed an ill child. I can feel his hunger, his stomach aches. He’s almost to the point where eating would make him sick and there aren’t any in this camp that would give him a meal. If he grows too weak to work, he will be recycled for usable parts.

 Curious, he drops the shovel and uses his hands to dig around the metal thing, finding the edges. It’s a box, like the size of a lunchbox but thicker. The supervisors will have him flogged if he doesn’t report anything out of the ordinary, but he is angry and tired and thinks maybe he was supposed to find this.

 There are too many Breds in the barracks at this time of day so he goes to the barn. I can smell the hay and the poop that the animals have made since the last time their stalls were mucked out. The horses have all been tended for the shift, no one else is inside.

 Settling down in an empty stall, he runs his dirty hands over the smooth surface. The metal is rough and cold after being in the ground so long. I can feel how fast his heart beats inside his chest and want to beg him to open the box.

 “You there! What are you doing?”

 He jumps at the sound of her voice and glances up. It’s the woman, the supervisor he’s seen on barracks patrol. She has a reputation for being cruel, but he can tell she is not from the look in her eyes. He has known cruel Borns before, the ones that punish the Bred just because they can.

 She is beautiful, with red-gold hair that she keeps tucked inside her warrior’s helmet. He has only seen her without it once but he remembers it vividly, how she looked in front of the bonfire.

 Will she have him flogged? He looks down at the box again. If he is going to be whipped, he will give her a reason.

 “Don’t!” I scream when he reaches for the latch.

 She uncoils the whip from her belt. “You leave me no choice.”

 He pivots away from the blow, offering his scarred back, still cradling his treasure. The whip whistles and the sharp crack wakes me up. My back hurts and when I looked in the mirror this morning I have a scar between my shoulder blades.

Leave a comment with your email address for a chance to win a PDF copy of the novella B Cubed! And be sure to check out more great apocalyptic stories at the Day the Sun Stopped Shining Blog Tour! List on Micheal Rivers' web site.

Six Sentence Sunday

Happy September everyone! I know both the Laundry Hag and I have been MIA lately but I'm back with some awesome news!  B Cubed Book One: Born in now available! This is such a cool world, and I'm not just saying that because I made it up!

The steam from the spring rose up, swathing him in an ethereal halo, as if the rest of the world faded away while he looked at her. His gaze slid downward. Her heart thumped inside her chest. She could feel the intensity of his stare on her naked flesh and it made her burn.

“So this is why the Borns are always so clean. I often wondered how you could stand washing in buckets of cold water so often.”

Born: Natural born humans are precious few and dwell in darkness.

Bred: Genetically engineered slaves who are the protectors of the Born.

Borg: The cybernetically enhanced enclave that split from the Born humans.

These three factions are all that remains of the human race after the world stopped turning. Scavenging in the darkness for what little is left, the war between them rages on though few know why. It begins with a child’s prophesy and can only end when they unite.

 Or die.

B Cubed Book One: Born
Now Available for Kindle, Nook and at ARe

From the moment he spies her silhouette cast by the bonfire, Cormack understands what it is to yearn for something he will never possess. Breds are made to provide for the natural born humans, dig their homes deep beneath the surface of the earth and to protect them from the ever-present cyborg threat.  A Bred who reaches beyond his station will be recycled immediately, yet Cormack cannot get her visage out of his mind.  Until he unearths a box, buried long before the earth stopped spinning.

Task Mistress Allora has no wish to brutalize the Bred worker she finds hoarding treasure, but as a servant of the colony that raised her from infancy, she is duty bound to report anything unusual to the Overlord, even if it costs the blue-eyed man his life. Yet something about the way Cormack watches her forces Allora to reevaluate her understanding of right and wrong. For this genetically engineered soldier is her only protection against the cyborgs who seek what they have discovered, a journal written by the prophetess Cassandra and a way to end the warring between the factions forever.

Six Sentence Sunday

Nothing says Easter like a little post apocalyptic Sci-fi romance, eh?  


From The B Cubed Trilogy Book 2: Bred

Isaac opened his mouth to respond but the pounding of hoof beats overpowered the stillness of the night. The two breds turned to see a host of mounted men swarming around a gleaming white carriage. As was customary, both breds fell to their bellies making themselves as unobtrusive as possible so no fine born lady would be forced to look upon them.

  

“You two there,” one of the riders called out. “Rise to your knees!”

Rothguard and Isaac exchanged worried glances at the unusual command.

Six Sentence Sunday

This week's  six sentence Sunday offering comes from my WIP B Cubed.  Its a sci-fi romance trilogy. This is from book 1, BORN.



Usually, I float over the scorched landscape, the one great supercontinent surrounded by the two polar oceans. I see the piles of bleached bones on the light side, they span for miles, stretching back through time. Then, I find the survivors. They live in small clusters, the born colonies as they call themselves. They are the descendants of those that did believe the prophesy and went deep underground. The bred do all the work though, people grown like crops. 

B Cubed

Behold, the cover for my now completed manuscript, B Cubed!

Need some feedback on my blurb. Is it compelling enough?

From the moment he spies her silhouette cast by the bonfire, Cormack understands what it is to yearn for something he will never possess. Breds are made to provide for the natural born humans, dig their homes deep beneath the surface of the earth and to protect them from the ever-present cyborg threat.  A bred who reaches beyond his station will be recycled immediately, yet Cormack cannot get her visage out of his mind.  Until he unearths a box, buried long before the earth stopped spinning. 

Task Mistress Allora has no wish to brutalize the bred soldier she finds hoarding treasure, but as a servant of the colony that raised her from infancy, she is duty bound to report anything unusual to the overlord, even if it costs the blue-eyed man his life. Yet something about the way Cormack watches her forces Allora to reevaluate her understanding of right and wrong. For this genetically engineered soldier is her only protection against the cyborgs who seek what they have discovered, a journal written by the prophetess Cassandra and a way to end the warring between the factions forever.

Thoughts? Hints? Suggestions?