Tag: Science Fiction

a look at Lucille Moncrief & ‘Nefarious IV’ @moncriefelle #Vampires #Romance #gothic

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Today we have author Lucille Moncrief visiting. Welcome!

What would you like to tell readers about yourself?

* Lucille Moncrief, authoress of The Keystone Curse and the dark erotic paranormal romance series Nefarious, was clearly a stodgy old librarian in a past life. She loves poring over history books and binge-watching PBS’s Secrets Of series. With an avaricious penchant for all things steampunk, Lucille’s breakthrough series, Nefarious, is custom-illustrated with exploding dirigible airships. And unnecessary gears abound.
* When Ms. Moncrief is not yelling at the kids to get off her lawn, you can find her staring out her window pretending to be pensive. She’s usually in a good mood and readily accepts follows and friend requests to her Facebook page.

Find Lucille Moncrief here…
Amazon Author Page | Facebook | Goodreads | Twitter | Website

A look into…

~ Blurb ~

The Dirigible Airship Disaster (Nefarious IV)
* Tired of written dreck and sparkly vampires? Sink your teeth into the Nefarious series and get a bigger bite out of fiction.
* Described as “captivating,” and “hauntingly beautiful,” the Nefarious series is a sophisticated, enthralling, and well-written tale of intrigue and devious desires. Set in a lurid, southern gothic world, follow the undead Talcott Henderson as he engages in a battle of wits with his intended, Elyse Delafayette.
* But wait, what’s this? Half-ling dhamphyrs armed with hawthorn stakes, a blood-witch coven torn apart by infighting, and a corpse-like, ancient vampire king with an agenda of his own?
* Enhanced with custom illustrations, this fast-paced steampunk series will leave you on the edge of your seat and hungry for more. If you are sick and tired of wimpy vampires and the flood of terrible books on the romance market, grab your copy today of the Nefarious series and relearn what a true escape into fiction is all about.

~ Excerpt ~

Chapter III ~ Present Time ~ Talcott Henderson
* Her eyes shone in the darkness with fresh tears as she recounted such a horrific tale. I longed to lick them from her lashes. The scent of such pungent, lingering sorrow coursing throughout her veins had my talons stinging like hornets, and I painfully itched to suck her dry until she came-to on the other side of death in my cold arms, where nothing ever hurt but the insatiable bloodlust. As she wiped at her face with her sleeve, I readjusted the pillows, stood, and approached her.
* “What became of the estate?” I asked.
* She shook her head. “I never returned.”
* Interesting. My mouth watered and burned.
* “It sits there? Unoccupied?”
* Sniffling like a dainty fool, she gave a small nod. Now I knew from whence we would reign, my tender bride and I.
* With Lucius dead and The Quartermaine alone the sole focus of her hatred, I was free to do with her as I wished. I could leave her be, but no fun would be had by either party. I could drain her dry right then and there, but then she would be a perishable good. No, no—I would turn her like I’d initially planned. But I would remain as her sire, her king, her master. I threatened to cry blood-stained tears of joy.
* The heat, the life rolled off her in delectable waves as I outstretched my arms. I expected her to recoil at my gesture, but surprise of all surprises, she fell against me like seismically shaken, crumbling bricks. She shook against my chest as her sorrowful tears soaked into my shirt. The perfume of it was like the sharp rays of the darkening moon—silvery, faintly sweet like almond milk. I carried her to the bed as my gums itched, my talons growing beneath the backs of her knees and entwining into her soft, fragrant hair.
* I placed her onto the bed. She looked up at me, her eyes wide, beautifully sad. I felt myself harden, electrifying into a ravenous fiend. The vein in her neck pulsated as I loomed over her, transmogrifying into my full, devilish form. I traced the outline of that precious vein with the sharp edge of my talon, and again to my surprise and delight, her eyelids fluttered closed, she sighed, and by tilting her head, she exposed herself to me in such exquisite submission.
* My fangs burst forth into sharp rapiers, and as she lay beneath me, prone and softly open, tear-stained, resigned, I merely stood still and drank in the draught of her; like tangy meringue, or a moist devil’s food cake, and leaned down to her carotid. I blew upon the sensitive flesh with ice-cold exhalation, tasting her shiver in the air, and my fingertips shook at this tender prey. I was the shark in the water, the hawk as it circled the terrified field mouse, the lone wolf as he prowled the edge of darkness, growling like the flames of hell. The points of my fangs touched the edge of her unbroken skin, but with the beat of her heart, I was at once repelled.
* My stomach lurched in a somersault as worry tugged at me, and I leaned down again to take a bite of her. Another strong thump, and a pulsating forcefield hit me in the gut, pushing me away like I was the wrong end of a magnet. The back of my legs hit the hard edge of the window seat, and at their meeting, like a tuning fork hitting a dissonant bell, my worry turned to complete and utter panic.

~ Buy ~
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Thank you for joining us here today, Lucille Moncrief! It was a pleasure getting to know you and your story.

a look at ‘PANDORA: Outbreak’ by Eric L. Harry #SciFi #pandemic @EricLHarry1 @SDSXXTours

On By Casey's CornerIn Authors & Books, Book Tours1 Comment
PANDORA: Outbreak
by Eric L. Harry
Genre: Science Fiction – pandemic
Pub Date: 1/23/2018
They call it Pandoravirus. It attacks the brain. Anyone infected may explode in uncontrollable rage. Blind to pain, empty of emotion, the infected hunt and are hunted. They attack without warning and without mercy. Their numbers spread unchecked. There is no known cure.
Emma Miller studies diseases for a living—until she catches the virus. Now she’s the one being studied by the U.S. government and by her twin sister, neuroscientist Isabel Miller. Rival factions debate whether to treat the infected like rabid animals to be put down, or victims deserving compassion. As Isabel fights for her sister’s life, the infected are massing for an epic battle of survival. And it looks like Emma is leading the way . . .
Raised in a small town in Mississippi, Eric L. Harry graduated from the Marine Military Academy in Texas and studied Russian and Economics at Vanderbilt University, where he also got a J.D. and M.B.A. In addition, he studied in Moscow and Leningrad in the USSR, and at the University of Virginia Law School. He began his legal career in private practice in Houston, negotiated complex multinational mergers and acquisitions around the world, and rose to be general counsel of a Fortune 500 company. He left to raise a private equity fund and co-found a successful oil company. His previous thrillers include Arc Light, Society of the Mind, Protect and Defend and Invasion. His books have been published in eight countries. He and his wife have three children and divide their time between Houston and San Diego.
Follow the tour HERE for exclusive excerpts, guest posts and a giveaway!

a look at ‘SINthetic’ by J.T. Nicholas #SciFi #Cyberpunk @JamesTNicholas @SDSXXTours

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SINthetic
The New Lyons Sequence #1
by J.T. Nicholas
Genre: Science Fiction – Cyberpunk Noir
Pub Date: 1/23/2018
The Artificial Evolution
They look like us. Act like us. But they are not human. Created to perform the menial tasks real humans detest, Synths were designed with only a basic intelligence and minimal emotional response. It stands to reason that they have no rights. Like any technology, they are designed for human convenience. Disposable.
In the city of New Lyons, Detective Jason Campbell is investigating a vicious crime: a female body found mutilated and left in the streets. Once the victim is identified as a Synth, the crime is designated no more than the destruction of property, and Campbell is pulled from the case.
But when a mysterious stranger approaches Campbell and asks him to continue his investigation in secret, Campbell is dragged into a dark world of unimaginable corruption. One that leaves him questioning the true nature of humanity.
And what he discovers is only the beginning . . .

Chapter 1
* The neon signs glowed sullenly, sending sickly tendrils of light slithering down the rain-soaked streets like so many diseased serpents. Once bright and inviting, the reds and blues and greens had dimmed and paled, sloughed off the flush of health, and left behind a spreading stain of false illumination that heralded nothing but sickness and decay. The signs themselves, flickering and buzzing, wheezing like something that wanted to die, something that should have died long ago, offered up a thousand different sins, unflinching in the frank descriptions of the acts taking place within the walls that they adorned.
* I stared at those signs, indistinct and hazy beneath the mantle of falling rain. The mist softened their lurid offers, restoring, however imperfectly, an innocence the city lost long ago. As the gentle caress of a silken veil added mystery to the sweeping curves of the female form, hinting at secrets far more tantalizing than the revealed flesh beneath, the cloak of rainfall shrouded the city’s darker side, softening its edges and lending it an air that approached civility.
* Approached civility, but did not—could not—achieve it.
* With a sigh, I turned my eyes away from the cityscape, and dropped them to the pavement beneath my feet. To the body that rested there, or what was left of it.
* After nearly ten years on the job, I still had to fight down the bile threatening to crawl its way up my esophagus and force its insistent path between my teeth. The body—so much easier to think of it as “the body” and not “the woman”—lay flat on its back, arms stretched out above its head and crossed at the wrists, legs spread akimbo. No clothing. Nor could I see any discarded garments in the immediate area. The pose, purposeful and meticulous in its own horrifying way, was a parody of passion. It was a pose that was likely even now being played out in many, perhaps most, of the establishments adorned with the gasping neon signs.
* With one very notable difference.
* Vestiges of beauty clung to the woman, holding desperately to a youthful vivacity that was losing an inexorable battle to the unnatural slackness of death. Makeup adorned that face, hiding the pallor beneath blush and eyeliner, lipstick and shadow, only now beginning to fade and run beneath the unrelenting assault of a thousand raindrops. Her features were symmetrical, regular, past the awkwardness of youth, but not yet touched by the wrinkles or worry lines that would fell all of us in time.
* I forced myself to look past her face, past the strong lines of her outstretched arms, sweeping past her bared breasts and to the…emptiness…that extended beneath her sternum.
* From her lowest ribs to the tops of her thighs, the woman had been…
* I realized I didn’t have a word for what had been done to her. The words that stormed through my mind—savaged, brutalized, tortured—leaving a teeth-gnashing anger in their wake and making my stomach twist itself into a Stygian knot, were almost certainly true, but they did not describe what lay before me.
* Hollowed.
* The word floated up from somewhere in my subconscious, bringing with it memories of carving into pumpkins and scooping out the seeds and ropey innards with big plastic spoons made slick and awkward from the pulpy mess.
* I clamped my teeth so hard that a lance of pain shot along my sinus cavities, but it kept me—if only just—from vomiting.
* Hollowed.
* The skin and muscle had been removed from the woman’s stomach and groin. The organs that should have been present—stomach, intestines, kidneys, everything south of the lungs—were gone. The tissue beneath them, the muscles along the spine, back, and buttocks remained, exposed to the air and rain. I could just make out pinkish gray tissue poking from beneath the ribs, so I guessed the lungs, and probably the heart, were intact and in place.
* There was no blood.
* The steady rain had formed a small pool in the resulting cavity, taking on a cast more black than red in the dimness of the night. No more blood on the body. No more blood at the scene.
* “Holy Mary, Mother of God.”
* The heartfelt exhalation came from behind me, and I glanced over my shoulder, tearing my eyes from the horror before me. The uniforms had finished cordoning off the area, spreading the yellow tape in a rough perimeter maybe twenty yards in diameter. Even on a night like this, in a neighborhood like this, a crowd had gathered, a few dozen people pressed up against the tape as if it were the glass wall at an aquarium, desperate to peer into the darkness and see the wonders and horrors within. All of them pointed screens in my direction or stared with the strange motionless intensity of someone wearing a recording lens. I prayed that the darkness, rain, and distance would cloud their electronic eyes, and grant the woman what little privacy and modesty were left to her.
* Halfway between me and the tape stood a small, trim man in his late forties. A fuzz of iron-gray hair sprouted from his head like a fungus, and a pencil-thin beard traced the line of his jaw. He wore blue coveralls, stenciled with the words “Medical Examiner” in gold thread. Dr. Clarence Fitzpatrick had been medical examiner in New Lyons for longer than I’d been a cop. We had worked some gruesome homicides, scenes far messier, at least in terms of scattered gore, than what lay before us. But nothing quite so damn eerie.
* “Yeah,” I muttered. “What can you tell me?”
* He made his way to the body and knelt by it, blue-gloved hands extended over it as if trying to divine information from the ether. “Liver temp is out of the question,” he said. There was no humor in his voice, no attempt to make light of the nature of the remains; he was simply stating the facts of the case before him, retreating behind cold professionalism. It was something you learned quick on the job. Those who could not put a wall between the atrocities and their own souls never lasted long.
* He touched the flesh of the woman’s arm, pressing against it, feeling the elasticity. “No rigor mortis, which means that death was either very recent or she’s been gone awhile.”
* He panned a flashlight across the body, the pale flesh luminescing under the harsh white light. “No discoloration of the remaining tissue. The damage sustained to the torso is sufficient to cause death, but there is no way to tell in situ if that occurred before or after she expired. Though if it had been done here, we would certainly be seeing a lot more blood, even with the rain.” He spoke in short, clipped bursts, keeping the medical jargon to a minimum, for my benefit no doubt.
* His hands moved to the woman’s head, peeling back the eyelids. “Cloudy. Most likely, she was killed more than twelve, but less than forty-eight hours ago. Apart from the obvious evisceration, there is no readily identifiable cause of death.” He cupped the woman’s face in his hands, twisting it gently to the side, continuing his field examination. He brushed back the dark locks of her hair, revealing the back of her neck. A deep sigh, a sound of relief, not regret, escaped him. “Thank God,” he said.
* I stared down at the woman, not really seeing what the doctor saw, but I knew what would be there. Only one thing could have drawn that reaction from Fitzpatrick. A raised pattern of flesh, roughly the size of an old postage stamp, darker than the surrounding skin and looking for all the world like an antiquated bar code. The tissue would be reminiscent of ritualistic scarring, but, unlike the woman herself, would not have known the touch of violence. It could be called a birthmark, but “birth” was not a word applied to the lab-grown people that were, collectively, known as synthetics. They bore other names, of course, dozens of them, all derogatory, all aimed at dehumanizing them further, at driving home the point that, though they might look and act and feel like us, they were not humans.
* Dr. Fitzpatrick was not immune to that dehumanization. “Thank God,” he said again. “She’s a mule.”
J.T. Nicholas was born in Lexington, Virginia, though within six months he moved (or was moved, rather) to Stuttgart, Germany. Thus began the long journey of the military brat, hopping from state to state and country to country until, at present, he has accumulated nearly thirty relocations. This experience taught him that, regardless of where one found oneself, people were largely the same. When not writing, Nick spends his time practicing a variety of martial arts, playing games (video, tabletop, and otherwise), and reading everything he can get his hands on. Nick currently resides in Louisville, Kentucky, with his wife, a pair of indifferent cats, a neurotic Papillion, and an Australian Shepherd who (rightly) believes he is in charge of the day-to-day affairs.
Follow the tour HERE for exclusive excerpts, guest posts and a giveaway!