Alien Gothic is live and available for purchase at Amazon, Apple, Google Play, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, and Smashwords/Draft2Digital for $2.99! Clicking on the book cover below will redirect you to the platform of your choice. It’s also available in paperback at Amazon for $8.99. (I’m working on expanding distribution for the paperback soon, so check this web site for updates!)
It’s Teaser Tuesday, and we’re officially 12 days away from the release of my YA sci-fi mystery (with lots of angst and romance), Alien Gothic! In anticipation, below are the first 1,000 (okay, it’s more like 1,200) words of Chapter 1:
I hate…
Well, to be honest, I hate a lot of things. I hate morning people. And mornings. And people. Although I have nothing against sports, really, I detest anything school spirit-related. I enjoy my science classes, but I’m not big on science fiction.
So, I consider it very unfortunate that, at 7:15 a.m.—a time when I’d rather walk barefoot on glass than interact with anyone—an alien is blocking the entrance to Pearl Falls High.
Not a real alien, of course. Andy the Alien, our school mascot. “Andy” is neon green, with wobbly antennae and large, teardrop-shaped black eyes. He or she saunters back and forth in front of the doors, shuffling a small stack of papers between gloved hands. Flyers, probably for something school spirit-related. Which means Andy is going to stop me and try to give me said flyer. Nope. No thank you.
Sure enough, as I dive for the door, a gangly green arm shoots in front of me, waving one of the flyers in my face. “We’re having a spirit booth this year at the Pearl Falls UFO Convention,” a muffled, male voice says, “the country’s fifth largest UFO con—”
“I know what it is.” The convention is the only reason anyone would ever bother visiting Pearl Falls, attracting so-called UFO enthusiasts (a.k.a. weirdos and conspiracy theorists) from all over the country. Sidestepping the arm, I force a smile. “And no, thanks.”
“Well, feel free to stop by the booth and…hey, wait a minute.” I’ve already yanked open the door, but for some reason, his words make me pause. “You’re Celeste, right? I heard about your grandpa. I’m really sorry.”
Jesus Christ. Does the whole town know Pappy died over the summer? Actually, given who my grandfather is—was—they probably do. “F*ck off,” I snap, going inside.
“Sor-ry,” he calls after me. “I was just trying to be nice!”
His apology is lost in a cacophony of slamming lockers, squealing sneakers, and people shouting to each other across the hall. I guess I thought the first day of senior year would feel different, somehow. But, except for getting accosted by an overeager space alien, everything feels pretty much the same old so far.
“Hey, Loony Lowe!” someone yells at me. The same old nickname. I ignore him, much more interested in the piece of paper taped to the front of my locker. It reads, in a bold, curvy font:
Show your school spirit at
PUFO CON,
the country’s fifth largest UFO convention!
Wear school colors, and stop by booth #67 to win prizes!
Beneath the text is a black-and-white photograph of a blurry, saucer-shaped object hovering over some mountains. Not just any photograph. The photograph.
The Lowe UFO.
“You working the convention this year, Loony?”
While I was reading, a small herd of sheep have flocked over to me, all pointing fingers and poorly suppressed giggles. “Working it?” a different sheep pipes up. “Her family practically runs it.”
I scowl. “Which one of you morons did this?” Smiles falter, and there are a lot of shaking heads and murmurs of “not me” as the herd disbands. When I tear the flyer down, it nearly rips in two. Crushing it up, I chuck it to the floor. It lands with a faint, unsatisfying whuff.
My backpack, on the other hand, makes a much more pleasing clang as I toss it to the bottom of the locker.
“Pardon me—”
“What?” Slamming the locker shut again, I whirl around. There’s a boy I don’t recognize beside me, his mouth hanging open. He is tall and lanky, his chin-length hair so blonde it almost shines silver. Light blue eyes blink at me.
“You, uh…dropped this.” When he holds up one of his pale, slender hands, it’s clutching the wrinkled flyer. A heavy-looking, metallic blue ring glints from his middle finger.
“Oh.” Unsure of what to do, I accept it from him. “Thanks, but I don’t actually need it. It’s trash.”
“I’m sorry,” he says quickly. “I can recycle it for you, if you’d like.” Speaking of weirdos. This kid is attractive, in a rather pretty way. But he gives awkward a run for its money. Not to mention the navy slacks and white collared shirt. He’s dressed like a teacher.
“I got it,” I insist. “I shouldn’t have just thrown it on the floor, anyway. I was mad. Someone put it on my locker as a joke.”
“I see.” He nods, but his brow is wrinkled as if he doesn’t quite understand. Great. Now the weird new kid thinks I’m weird.
“Oh, Mich-ael!” a girl calls over. This voice, I’d recognize anywhere. Mallory Isaac—the Queen Sheep—clops over to us, her second-in-command, Ava Coolidge, in tow.
“One thing you’ll have to learn at Pearl Falls High, Michael,” Mallory continues, flashing her pearly whites, “is about the hierarchy. People like me, Ava—and you, of course—are at the top. The rest—” she makes sure to catch my gaze for this last bit— “are the bottom-dwellers.”
Guess I have a pretty good idea who taped that PUFO Con flyer to my locker. “One thing you’ll have to learn about this school, Michael.” Despite my flaming cheeks, the words somehow come out clipped and cool. “Some people, like us, are normal humans. While others are vapid bimbos.” I mirror Mallory’s bright smile.
Queenie stiffens, but her grin never falters. “Ava?” she says pointedly to her friend. “Don’t you have anything you want to say?”
Uncertainty flickers in Ava’s hazel eyes. Stepping toward me, she flips some of her honey blonde hair over her shoulder. “Michael is my guy. And you know what happens to people who try to take my things, leech.”
“I’m not your guy.” The new kid’s quick, curt reply takes me by surprise. From the stricken look on Ava’s face, it’s shocked her, too. Shaking his head, Michael walks away.
Ava, chin trembling, watches him go. For the briefest of moments—and I’m talking one billionth of one second brief—I almost feel bad for her. But hell hasn’t frozen over yet.
“Ugh. You chased him off.” A beat later, and the cheerleader is back to her normal self, glowering at me. “It’s like you’re hot guy repellant.”
I can’t help it. I burst out laughing. “I didn’t chase him off. He left because he doesn’t like you.”
Both sheep gasp. “Take that back!” Ava cries. “Leech.”
“No way, you…stupid b*tch.”
“I said…” She takes another measured step toward me. Then another. And another. “Take. That. Back.” On the last word, she thrusts out a manicured hand, jabbing me in the shoulder. Her fingernails scrape over the thin material of my black dress.
“Don’t touch me.” To go with the dress, I’m wearing a pair of fingerless gloves, but underneath the black lace…God, I hate it when this happens. I don’t know how to describe it, except that it feels something like thousands of fire ants scuttling beneath my skin. Whatever you do, I remind myself, do not lose control.
“Girl fight!” There’s a shout. The sheep are back, forming a semicircle around us. Ava shoves me again, so hard this time I go stumbling into the locker behind me.
“Take it back,” she says, “and I won’t have to.”
“Oh, that is it.” Anger flares up inside me. The invisible fire ants swarm. I lunge for Ava, but she’s already grabbing a fistful of my hair. She pulls. Crying out, I clap a hand over hers, trying to unclasp her fingers. I’m touching her, but barely.
I hear the rattle of metal, a jarring sound in the abruptly silent corridor, before I realize what’s happened.
*****
Click on the book cover to preorder!
Description:
Celeste Lowe is no stranger to the strange. Living in tiny Pearl Falls, Oregon—infamous for PUFO Con, its annual UFO and sci-fi convention—it’s hard not to be. Plus, Celeste is rather strange herself: She can move objects without touching them. Mostly, she avoids using her unusual ability altogether, not even to retaliate against her arch nemesis, Ava Coolidge. Then comes the day she’s forced to defend not only herself, but Ava’s older brother, Dave, against two unlikely attackers.
As the son of the most powerful family in town, Dave represents everything Celeste hates. Or thought she hated. But the golden boy of Pearl Falls is nothing like she expects. When one of their attackers turns up dead, Dave’s determined to protect Celeste and her secret, lest anyone assume the worst. What’s more, the mysterious markings on the body mirror those seen in another unsolved murder: Dave’s own mother’s.
With Celeste, Dave, and their friends forming an unlikely alliance to solve these cold cases, she’s finding it harder and harder to keep her secret. And just as she’s opening her heart for the first time, she learns that Dave has a secret of his own.
Content Warning: Alien Gothic contains some descriptions of dead bodies. A side character has been accused of SA at his college, but, although he does verbally harass the main character, there is no on-the-page SA. One of the alien civilizations in the book was nearly wiped out in a genocide, but again, this is all background information.
Myself, my husband, and our daughter were sick for two weeks, including over Easter weekend. And in the back of my mind during that time, I’m like “Hmmm…yeah…my next novel is set to come out May 11, 2024. I should probably be, like, promoting it or something?”
Thus, I have emerged from the haze of the flu, or whatever the heck we had (it wasn’t COVID – we already did that, too, this winter) to promote my YA sci-fi mystery romance, Alien Gothic. Read on for the deets and book summary, but in short, I’m calling it Riverdale meets The X-Files. If you like the Lux series by Jennifer L. Armentrout, Roswell (yes, the late 90s WB show), or Animorphs, Alien Gothic might be up your alley.
If you’d like to apply for a review copy (mobi, epub, or pdf versions are available) of Alien Gothic, sign up here. You can also preorder it for $2.99 from all of the major e-book distributors (the link redirects you to the platform of your choice!).
I’ve been working on the story that eventually became Alien Gothic for…a long time. I’m not even sure I want to admit how long, lol. There’s that quote attributed to Albert Einstein, although who knows if he actually said it: “Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.” Well, I’ve certainly learned a lot about writing craft and publishing since I self-published my first novel, Reborn, a little over ten years ago (has it really been that long?!). So when I went back and dusted this idea off, I did expect to turn it into something better and more relevant.
Thinking about it tonight, the core premise of AG – a young woman who is special, and wishes she wasn’t – isn’t all that different from Reborn. (I’m not sure why I keep returning to this theme of the reluctant heroine in my writing, but we’ll table that discussion for another post.) Whereas Reborn was often very high stakes (averting the a p o c a l y p s e), much of AG is just a girl trying to solve a mystery when her best friend is wrongfully accused of murder.
Well, okay, there is the whole impending alien invasion, too.
I’ll talk more about the inspirations for the book (and maybe the title) in the weeks leading up to Alien Gothic‘s release on May 11. For now, I leave you with the synopsis. Happy almost Thursday, and happy reading!
*****
Celeste Lowe is no stranger to the strange. Living in tiny Pearl Falls, Oregon—infamous for PUFO Con, its annual UFO and sci-fi convention—it’s hard not to be. Plus, Celeste is rather strange herself: She can move objects without touching them. Mostly, she avoids using her unusual ability altogether, not even to retaliate against her arch nemesis, Ava Coolidge. Then comes the day she’s forced to defend not only herself, but Ava’s older brother, Dave, against two unlikely attackers.
As the son of the most powerful family in town, Dave represents everything Celeste hates. Or thought she hated. But the golden boy of Pearl Falls is nothing like she expects. When one of their attackers turns up dead, Dave’s determined to protect Celeste and her secret, lest anyone assume the worst. What’s more, the mysterious markings on the body mirror those seen in another unsolved murder: Dave’s own mother’s.
With Celeste, Dave, and their friends forming an unlikely alliance to solve these cold cases, she’s finding it harder and harder to keep her secret. And just as she’s opening her heart for the first time, she learns that Dave has a secret of his own.
Indeed, what is next? Lol.
Well, before I get into the true purpose of this post (to discuss current projects), I want to mention that I have a very exciting interview coming up with one of my absolute favorite authors! That will go up early next week, so stay tuned.
Retribution, the fourth and final (ish?) installment in my Greek mythology-inspired Reborn series, came out on June 26th. So, it’s been out in the world for nearly three months! This leads me to my first announcement: The individual books in the series will be leaving Kindle Unlimited on September 23rd. After that, I will be releasing the entire series to the other major e-book platforms (Nook, Smashwords, Google, Apple, Kobo, and a few others). But, if you are a Kindle Unlimited subscriber, don’t fret. The Reborn complete series box set will remain available on KU!
Now, I say final-ish above because, although Retribution wrapped up the stories of my main characters in the series (Siobhan, Carly), I do have ideas for other novels set in the same world. I do entertain these ideas and work on them from time to time, but it’s going to take awhile for them to reach any sort of publish-able state, lol.
I also have a stand-alone, Halloween-inspired novella about Hades and Persephone that I keep putting on the backburner. Every. Damn. Year. And it takes place on Halloween, so it’s not like I can release it at any other point during the year, lol. But, I have literally penciled in a release date next year into my calendar, so my goal is to actually finish it for 2022.
My other ideas include an Anna-focused book. Because, let’s face it, I think she needs some healing/closure after the events in Retribution. And then a new trilogy focused on completely different characters and Greek deities, that would mostly take place on Olympus (and have major gothic romance/Wuthering Heights vibes).
For now, though, I am working on something completely different. After being entrenched in my little Olympian urban fantasy world since the plague began, I needed a change of pace. So, I am once again re-working my teen alien YA book that I have been going back to fiddle with for… years, at this point. Last year, I got to it a stage where I was fairly happy with it, but I later realized some things about it just weren’t working. I am cutting it waaaay down (the last draft was nearly 90K, and I’m hoping to whittle it down to somewhere in the 55-65K range), and rewriting it from one of the character’s points-of-view (it was originally written in third person).
Anyway, I’m only mentioning it because I’m really excited now about how it’s turning out. Sometimes (well, always…) these things just take time. I am obsessed with the story/characters because they let me play with one of my ongoing obsessions, UFOs and aliens, haha. Think Roswell (the 90s TV show/book series; I haven’t seen the remake), Animorphs, or, for a more recent comp that doesn’t age me quite as much, Obsidian by Jennifer L. Armentrout. I am probably going to try querying it again first, but if that doesn’t work out, I’m planning to self-publish it.
Writing fiction is so weird sometimes. It’s basically spending most of your free time working on something that no one asked for and no one needs. But you’re getting it anyway! Lol.
I’m going to wrap up this post with a big thank you to all of you who have ever bought and read one of my books, but especially to those who have done so recently! The Reborn box set has been doing particularly well in recent weeks, including on KU. Thanks you!! And if you find yourself with a free moment, please consider leaving a review on Amazon or Goodreads! I’m sure it’s super annoying authors are always asking for that, lol. But it is one of the most helpful things you can do to help an author out! Plus, it lets you inform other potential readers what they’re in for if they decide to buy the book.
Like I said, stay tuned for that author interview next week. In the meantime, happy reading!
I’m a day late in writing this, but that’s okay, because you still have plenty of time to download two of my books for *free* this week!
Through the end of the day (that means 11:59 pm PDT) Friday, you can purchase the two Reborn series novellas, Revenge and Rectify, for free on Amazon! If you want to read them in order with the rest of the series, Revenge is book 2.5, and Rectify is book 3.5. But I wrote them in such a way so they also stand on their own.
Revenge is a short ghost story that focuses on one of the other Greek houses in the Reborn world, Alpha Rho. One of the Alpha Rho’s sorority sisters has died, and her spirit needs the sorority’s help to move on to the afterlife. It ties up some loose ends from the Alpha Rho subplot in Reborn, but it’s really a story about friendship and sisterhood. (And did I mention ghosts?)
Rectify is told from the point-of-view of Apate, the Greek goddess of trickery. She’s been stirring up a lot of trouble lately, but in Rectify she’s looking to right past wrongs. Her POV is a ton of fun to write from, because she says, and does, what she wants, and sometimes breaks the fourth wall. The novella also centers around her budding romance with Jimmy, a bartender and musician (and her arch nemesis’s ex).
The summaries for each novella are below. And if you do read one or both of them, I’d appreciate you leaving your thoughts on Amazon and/or Goodreads! Word of mouth is still the best way authors grow their readership.
Revenge
A stand-alone ghost story set in the Reborn world…
Genie Cho was ambitious, a dedicated student, and–as president of her sorority, Alpha Rho–a promising leader. Until she made some new, otherworldly–and dangerous–friends. They opened her up to a world of magic, a world where everyone had special powers. They promised her eternal life. But something went wrong, and Genie wound up dead.
Her untimely death has shaken all of her sorority sisters, but hits Rebecca Grey especially hard. Ever since her roommate’s passing, Rebecca’s sleepless nights have been filled with nightmares. Rebecca even thinks she hears Genie’s voice sometimes, calling out for help. Although some of her sisters remain skeptical, Rebecca is convinced that Genie’s ghost is still out there somewhere and needs their help to move on.
Join Rebecca and the Alpha Rhos on their journey to lay Genie’s spirit to rest, a quest that takes them beyond the safety and comfort of their sorority house to the gates of the Underworld.
Rectify
A sexy, stand-alone novella set in the Reborn world…
Love ’em and leave ’em. That’s always been Apate’s motto. The Olympian goddess of trickery doesn’t have time for entanglements, romantic or otherwise. And she sure as hell doesn’t have time for regret.
But when Thurston University student Siobhan Elliot goes missing and the human cops start sniffing around, Apate’s dubious past catches up with her. Now it’s only a matter of time until Jimmy, her latest conquest—who also happens to be Siobhan’s ex—finds out it’s her fault. To cover her tracks, Apate pays a visit to the Elliots, using her powers of illusion to pose as their daughter and convince them everything’s fine. Lying is easy. Confronting the consequences of her actions, however, will prove to be much harder than Apate expected.
To find her redemption, Apate knows it’s time to come clean. But the truth could cost her the only love she’s ever known.
To celebrate the release of Retribution, the fourth and final installment of the Reborn series, I have several promotions running over on Amazon for the earlier books in the series.
Reborn, the first book, is still free for a few more hours! Grab yours before it goes back to its original price tonight at 11:59 pm PST. The second and third books, Relapse and Reclaim, are both currently $0.99. Their price goes up to $1.99 in one day and reverts back to the original price on Sunday.
And if you do purchase one (or more 😉 ) of my books, remember to leave a brief, honest review of your thoughts on Amazon and/or Goodreads!
In other news, today I went live on Facebook for the first time! Overall, it was a little awkward but not too shabby? After the updates, I read a short excerpt from Chapter 4 of Retribution! Haha, so I can’t get the video to embed properly, but you can watch it here! (I am admittedly too tired to fiddle with trying to embed it, lol.)
Happy Friday Eve!
I am running a promotion for Reborn, the first book in my romantic urban fantasy series. Reborn is FREE for Kindle through the end of the day (11:59 pm PDT) July 12th! This way, you can dip your toes, so to speak, into the series if you’re new to it! Grab your free copy here.
Reborn is a modern, darker spin on the Eros and Psyche story from Greek Mythology. I call it an urban fantasy with strong romantic elements because it doesn’t fit the typical romance formula (not that there’s anything wrong with that!).
I just released the fourth and final book, Retribution, and the complete series is also available to KU subscribers.
***
Summary: An old flame. A magical sorority. An uncontrollable power…
Siobhan Elliot’s World Myths and Legends class was supposed to be an easy way to get elective credit. Instead, she gets an unexpected—and unwanted—blast from the past in the form of the course’s handsome teaching assistant, Jasper Hart. He puts the cliché tall, dark and handsome to shame, but that’s the least of Siobhan’s worries. Because she’s met him before.
And he’s definitely not human.
Back then, their brief encounter left her with a unique but uncontrollable power, forever altering her young adult life. Now, the only person who can tell her the truth about who—and what—she really is doesn’t seem to remember her.
Even so, Jasper’s return opens a whole new world to Siobhan, one straight from the pages of her World Myths and Legends textbook. Her already bizarre life is about to be turned upside down, and nothing—not even her sorority, Gamma Lambda Phi—is left untouched. A world where Greek mythology meets Greek life, legendary lovers reunite, and nothing is what it seems.
Happy Wednesday!
If you’re in one of the areas in the US experiencing record heat waves, I hope you’re able to stay cool. And while you’re indoors basking in the AC, why not curl up with a book?
Retribution, the fourth and final(?) installment of the Reborn series, is out in the world! You can purchase it alone for Kindle or as part of the complete series box set. All of my books are also available for KU subscribers. While you’re at it, add it to your summer TBR pile on Goodreads.
If funds are tight, I will be giving out a few review copies of the series box set (.mobi or pdf), so fill out this Google form if you’re interested! All I ask is that you leave an honest review on Goodreads and Amazon when you’re done reading. (And it goes without saying I won’t share your email with anyone, or use it for any other purpose!)
Summary:
Siobhan has returned from a seven-month stint in Pandora to a world that’s falling apart. Literally.
She doesn’t care, though, about the holes in the walls between the worlds. Or that, according to a prophecy, she’s the only one who can stop Eric and his halfling army from taking over Olympus. All Siobhan wants now is to get back to some semblance of normalcy in life, and in her relationship with Jasper.
Meanwhile, combat training is Carly’s new normal. But while Gamma Lambda Phi prepares for certain war, she grapples with missing memories and a forgotten power. And just when a possibility for new love presents itself, an old flame is rekindled.
Electra is the new general of Eric’s army, but it’s a tenuous command. She is caught between love and fear, sanity and madness, a desire for absolution and a thirst for vengeance…
In the game of the gods, anything goes, and nothing is what it seems. And in this conclusion to the Reborn saga, these three women will learn just how far they’re willing to go to win.
With only ten days to go until Retribution releases July 1, I thought I’d share the first part of Chapter 1.
There are three main threads in the novel. Most of it is told from, of course, Siobhan’s perspective. The second chunk is from Carly’s. The third is a surprise, but it’s someone readers are familiar with (and will probably figure out fairly quickly). Your first clue is that Chapter 1 is called “Eric”. Your second clue is this playlist.
By the way, the Reborn series box set is on sale for Kindle through Wednesday morning. And you can pre-order Retribution here.
~
Every night, in my dreams, I return to the lake.
I kneel on the pebbled shore, swirling a finger through sepia-toned waters. Deep down, I know the color is wrong. But I also know I’m dreaming.
Think I’m dreaming.
Small waves lap the beach, rhythmic, endless, leaving behind dark, damp stones and traces of brown sludge. If I listen closely, I can hear the waves whispering. If I listen closer still, I can make out the words.
Feel me. See me. Know me.
I spring to my feet, shivering. But the whispers are a chorus now, pounding like blood in my temples.
Feel me.
See me.
Know me.
Hitching a breath, I dip my toes in the water. It is ice, but it is also a balm, the lake’s song diminishing to a murmur once again. I tiptoe forward until the water is ankle-deep. A little further still, and it doesn’t feel so bad anymore, the waves skimming my legs like indolent fingers.
Calves, knees, torso, shoulders—soon everything save for my head is submerged. I pause, treading water, and scan the lake. It is silent now. And I am alone.
There’s a pressure at my back, warm and slippery, like an eel slithering around my waist. It hooks my hip, shocking the breath out of me. A final squeeze, and I’m tugged entirely into the water.
Down here, the world is black ice. Everything is numbing, burning, crushing pain. I fight and thrash, but nothing I do makes any difference. Whatever has ahold of me isn’t letting go, dragging me down, down, down into more dark silence.
***
He is down here, in these muddy waters. I can’t see him, but his presence swells with every yard I fall. He sleeps. Dreams. Waits.
He waits for me.
Writing your first novel is…hard. Publishing your first novel, whether you decide to go the traditional or self-publishing route, is hard. But do you know what’s at least equally as hard, if not harder?
Writing the next book. And the next. And the next.
I forget who this quote is ascribed to, but I’ve heard it said you never learn how to write a book – you only learn how to write this book. I’ve been thinking about that quote lately, and how true it is. I published the first edition of Reborn back in November of 2013. That’s…eight years ago, lol. It started out as a pretty simple idea: a story about a college-aged woman who runs into a man from her past. A tall, dark, handsome, broody man who is probably not human. And who is either her long-lost love or sworn enemy. Or a little bit of both.
I wondered who these two characters were. I wanted to root around their brains, find out what drove them, what scared them, what – and who – they wanted more than anything.
Then, quite suddenly, I didn’t have just Siobhan and Jasper anymore, these two fascinating but deeply flawed people. I had a whole world in my head I wanted to explore, a world where Greek mythology met Greek life but was also equal parts 90s syndicated sci-fi show and teen drama. If you would have asked me to describe Reborn when it first came out, I might have told you it was like Stargate SG-1 meets Greek (you know, the ABC Family – now Freeform – show from the late 2000s?). Which is honestly kind of accurate, but also who the heck would want to read that (besides me)?
If you’re new to the Reborn series, it’s essentially a modern retelling of the Eros and Psyche myth. My Psyche is Siobhan Elliot, a college student at the fictional Thurston University in Shadesburg (a Pittsburgh-esque city). My Eros is Jasper Hart, her hot teaching assistant for her World Myths and Legends class. The first two books in the series, Reborn and Relapse, mostly focus on their complicated, at times downright toxic, relationship, as well as Siobhan’s efforts to navigate this new world she finds herself in.
Pretty quickly, my ideas for the series expanded beyond Siobhan and Jasper’s story. It spawned two novellas and the third installment, Reclaim, which focused on a different main character: Siobhan’s sorority sister, Carly Dragonjac. While Siobhan’s interests began to clash a lot with her sorority’s, I think of Carly as the Gamma Lambda Phi sister who stayed. As Carly doesn’t have much of a family left, the sorority didn’t just become her home-away-from-home, but her home, period. And her storyline let me indulge one of my other favorite archetypes, the wicked (and sexy) trickster god. The fourth book, Retribution, picks up where both Siobhan and Carly’s stories left off and gives them a (mostly) happy resolution.
Oh, right. Did I mention I have a book coming out?
Going back to that quote at the beginning of the post, it took me four years (Reclaim was published in 2017) to learn how to write Retribution. Not that I was writing it that entire time. I was not. I did put out a novella in 2019, but mostly the ideas for the fourth book were marinating. And, sure, then there was a global pandemic in which I was like…okay, I’m at home way more than usual, there is literally no excuse now not to finish this book…
Although the major ideas and revelations in the book never changed, I think it would have been a much different book if I had forced myself to write it four years ago. It was always going to be about how Siobhan and Jasper both heal from their past traumas, how they finally find their way back to an authentic, healthy version of their relationship. But I was also thinking about several larger themes while I was writing it. For one: What would happen if our world was infiltrated by an alien civilization? (Slight spoiler alert: probably nothing good.)
And, in this era of movements like #MeToo, where we’re starting, as a society, to confront egregious abuses of power and privilege, I was thinking a lot about what we’re “allowed” or expected to feel as women. So, power is definitely one of the major themes in Retribution – confronting power imbalances, confronting those who abuse their power and, most importantly, reclaiming that power.
Now, there are definitely many light-hearted, fun, silly, sexy, and romantic moments in Retribution. But it does get rather dark at times. Rest assured, there is a light at the end of the tunnel. In the meantime, I let my female characters experience the whole gamut of emotions: happiness, love, desire, fear, desperation, despair, regret, hate, resentment. Each main character has an inner darkness to confront. One learns to accept and live with it. One rises above it. One embraces it.
You can pre-order Retribution for Kindle on Amazon! It releases July 1, 2021. While you’re at it, add it on Goodreads. I am planning to give out a few review copies (.mobi or pdf only), so email me at slstacyauthor@gmail.com if you’re interested. Heidi’s gorgeous cover art and the book summary are below!
*****
Siobhan has returned from a seven-month stint in Pandora to a world that’s falling apart. Literally.
She doesn’t care, though, about the holes in the walls between the worlds. Or that, according to a prophecy, she’s the only one who can stop Eric and his halfling army from taking over Olympus. All Siobhan wants now is to get back to some semblance of normalcy in life, and in her relationship with Jasper.
Meanwhile, combat training is Carly’s new normal. But while Gamma Lambda Phi prepares for certain war, she grapples with missing memories and a forgotten power. And just when a possibility for new love presents itself, an old flame is rekindled.
Electra is the new general of Eric’s army, but it’s a tenuous command. She is caught between love and fear, sanity and madness, a desire for absolution and a thirst for vengeance…
In the game of the gods, anything goes, and nothing is what it seems. And in this conclusion to the Reborn saga, these three women will learn just how far they’re willing to go to win.
slstacy.com 