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In My Own Shadow by Susan A Royal @susanaroyal #RLFblog #SciFi #romance
Today’s featured book is In My Own Shadow by Susan A Royal Tell us about your story. We’ll have other questions in a moment.Talk about the worst day ever! Lara lets her friend Carrie talk her into a blind date, only it turns out the handsome stranger waiting for Lara after work isn’t Carrie’s cousin after all. And, when they’re chased through a portal to another world, Lara realizes Rhys really is out of this world.
Lyra, her alternate in another dimension, has left clues to the whereabouts of the Book of Secrets explaining the mystery of time travel in Lara’s subconscious. Or so Rhys thinks. Power-hungry telepaths who pursue them will stop at nothing to get it, even if it means breaking Lara’s will. To complicate matters, Lara gets tangled up in her feelings for Rhys while exploring her connection with Lyra.
With Rhys as her guardian, a bear of a man named Azle to guide her, and the spirit of Lyra haunting her dreams, Lara must find the Book of Secrets before it falls into the hands of those who want its power. Only then can she return to her world safely.
What species/races of people are in your book?
Humans.
Do you have non-sentient creatures or animals in your story? If so, what are they?
No.Language and Culture
What languages are spoken in your story universe?
Telepaths exist in this world, and some of them are power hungry enough to invade other peoples’ minds to get the information they want.
If you created a language for the story, what is it called?
In the culture of your story world, what is different from ours?
It’s supposed to be run like a business. But Yusel is the head of the Council and treated like royalty. He considers the representatives from other parts of the country as his noblemen and women. Everyone else lives like peasants, with the exception of the desert people, who keep to themselves and follow their own rules.
What special laws are important to your story world?
Representatives are part of the council who gather at the citadel to make sure all laws in the book passed down from the Ancients are followed. But they have discovered another books exists. And some of them will do anything to get it.
What rights (such as equality) are challenges for your characters?
All Lara wants to do is find The Book of Secrets so she can go home. Everyone wants answers, and they’ll do anything to get them. She has to fight to keep them from getting inside her head because she’s afraid she’ll lose her identity.Story Setting
Describe one of the worlds where your story takes place.
In My Own Shadow takes place in an alternate reality where Lara’s double is Lyra. They look alike and have similar personalities. Only Lyra has gone off the deep end. She craves power, while all Lara wants is for her life to return to normal. Her world has beautiful places like the Citadel, a city in the clouds, and desolate places like Elusion, a barren wasteland where nothing is what it seems.
What makes this world unique?
Portals can be used to travel to other parts of the world. And sometimes the location of the portal itself is fluid. It moves from place to place.
Tell us about the age of the culture in your story, i.e., are the people part of an ancient civilization, a newly formed group within an established culture, pioneer colonists, etc.
The people who rule are descendants of an ancient civilization. Supernatural beings inhabit the planet (banshees, vampires, etc) along with animals that have special abilities, but the majority of the population is ordinary people.
What food or drink is available to your characters?
Most of their journey they are living off the land, so they eat whatever game is available (fish and something similar to rabbit) When they arrive at the citadel, they eat gourmet foods and sip exotic drinks of all colors. When they join the caravan one of the pilgrims offers Lara fruit he calls Bliss which that her hallucinations.
In what ways was it helpful to have a map (or sketch of one) for your story? (Provide a link to an image, if available).
I didn’t do a map, because they “jumped” all over the planet, both above and below the surface.Character Physiology
What are the physical characteristics of the race/species of your main characters?
All the characters are human. Any special abilities are mental.
What physical differences exist in the way your characters communicate (i.e., telepathy, empathic abilities, etc.) with each other?
Lyra is Lara’s double from an alternate reality. She visits Lara’s subconscious without her knowledge or permission. That’s what gets Lara into trouble to begin with. Her father, Yusel, and her half-brother Rund have similar abilities. They can read other people’s minds at will unless they are strong enough to block them.Sharing World Building Expertise
Please give us three tips you find helpful when creating a story world:
Creating your own world makes for a fantastic journey. You get to make all the rules. BUT you have to remember to follow them. If you don’t (a) it will trip you up down the road and/or (b) some reader will let you know your error right away!
When you researched for your story setting, what kinds of things did you learn?
I learned about mental telepathy, martial arts, banshees, vampires, underground caverns to mention just a few.
What things should writers avoid when building a science fiction world?
I can’t answer for everyone, but I try to avoid making it too complicated. Readers want to be entertained. Caught up in the story. They don’t want to bog down in details. I have to make sure I describe it in detail without boring my reader.
Share a resource you found helpful when researching for your story.
I read a lot of science fiction, but while I was writing this story I paid special attention to each author’s world building with these things in mind. How much setting up should I do? How do I avoid info-dumping? How can I make it believable in spite of the fact that it’s fantasy?
What’s your advice for writers who want to create a solid background for their story world?
I’m not much of a plotter, but when I was writing one of the settings (the part about the citadel, for example) I made a checklist of important things I needed to remember. When I was in the middle of a scene I referred back to it for continuity.Specific science fiction genre: Fantasy
Book heat level (based on movie ratings): PG 13
Publisher MuseItUp
Amazon https://www.amazon.com/My-Own-Shadow-Susan-Royal-ebook/dp/B00CPN41YQ
Barnes and Noble https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/in-my-own-shadow-susan-a-royal/1115273938Susan A Royal Social Media
Born in west Texas and raised in south Texas, Susan shares a 100-year-old farmhouse in a small east Texas town with a ghost who harmonizes with her son when he plays guitar. She is a mother of three and grandmother of five unique and special children. Her family is rich with characters, both past and present. Susan’s grandmother shared stories of living on a farm in Oklahoma Territory and working as a telephone operator in the early 20th century. She learned all about growing up in the depression from her father and experienced being a teenager during WWII through her mother’s eyes.
Susan loves taking her readers through all kinds of adventures. So far, she’s written two books in her It’s About Time series, Not Long Ago and From Now On, and is working on book three. They are time travel adventures about two people who fall in love despite the fact they come from very different worlds. In My Own Shadow is a Fantasy adventure/romance. Xander’s Tangled Web is a YA fantasy with romance.
Want to know more? Visit www.susanaroyal.wordpress.com for a peek inside this writer’s mind and see what she’s up to. You never know what new world she’s going to visit next.
Website https://susanaroyal.com
Blog https://susanaroyal.wordpress.com
Twitter https://twitter.com/SusanA.Royal
Facebook https://www.facebook.com/susanaroyalauthor/
Pinterest https://www.pinterest.com/ssn_royal/
Goodreads https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/6442088.Susan_A_Royal
Amazon Author Page https://www.amazon.com/Susan-A.-Royal/e/B008E8RKU8/Contest
Please leave your email address along with your comment. Susan will draw one name randomly for a free copy of In My Own Shadow.
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Mission to Mahjundar by Veronica Scott @vscotttheauthor #RLFblog #SciFi #romance
Today’s featured book is Mission to Mahjundar by Veronica Scott. Tell us about your story. We’ll have other questions in a moment.An attempted assassination left Princess Shalira blind as a child and, now that she’s of marriageable age, her prospects are not good because of her disability. She’s resigned herself to an arranged marriage rather than face life under the thumb of her cold stepmother. But then she meets Mike Varone, a Sectors Special Forces officer sent to Mahjundar by the intergalactic government to retrieve a ship lost in her planet’s mountains. After Mike saves Shalira from another assassination attempt, she arranges for him to escort her across the planet to her future husband. She’s already falling hard for the deadly offworlder and knows she should deny herself the temptation he represents, but taking Mike along to protect her is the only way she’ll live long enough to escape her ruthless stepmother.
Mike, for his part, resists his growing attraction to the princess; he has a mission on this planet and rescuing the vulnerable but brave princess isn’t it. No matter how much he wishes it could be.
But what should have been an easy trek through Mahjundar’s peaceful lands swiftly turns into an ambush with danger around every turn. Shalira’s marriage begins to seem less like an arranged union and more like yet another planned assassination. The more they work together to survive, the harder it becomes to stop themselves from falling in love. Caught in a race against time, can they escape the hostile forces hunting them and make it off the planet?
What species/races of people are in your book?
Humans descended from Terran colonists and the local population of the planet, who are humanoid.
Do you have non-sentient creatures or animals in your story? If so, what are they?
The legendary ‘cherindor’, which are sacred to the royal family of the planet. They are represented as huge winged felines with barbed tails and three eyes.
Language and Culture
What languages are spoken in your story universe?
My characters primarily speak the interstellar common language Basic, but people around them speak Mahjundan and other local languages. My military Special Forces hero from the Sectors has been hypnotrained in the primary language before the mission began. He has a guide assigned to assist him with the more regional dialects.
What special laws are important to your story world?
Since the planet isn’t as technologically advanced as many in the Sectors, the hero isn’t supposed to be using ‘modern’ weapons, but he’s brought some on the job anyway. Never be without your trusty blaster in a scifi romance! The heroine, Princess Shalira, has been promised in marriage by her father the emperor, to a feudal warlord as part of a treaty. Part of the plot hinges on the necessity for her to undergo certain rituals and recover tribal clan insignia from her late mother’s tomb. Mike, the hero, gets drawn into this journey and becomes quite enmeshed in the mysticism and magic of the planet while trying to protect her and accomplish his own mission.
What rights (such as equality) are challenges for your characters?
Shalira was left blind as a result of the assassination attempt on her as a child, so she deals with that every day. She is less respected by her people, because she isn’t a ‘perfect’ imperial princess. Ironically one of the fierce indigenous peoples they encounter on the journey view her blindness as making her a perfect messenger to and from their gods. The high priests in the mountain city fight over her, while planning to kill Mike as a sacrifice to their cruel gods.
Story Setting
What makes this world unique?
The old gods are fading away on Mahjundar as people turn to worshipping newer deities, but the primitive pantheon still wields power. Shalira is one of the people able to draw on that power, which makes her vulnerable to a number of scheming factions.
Tell us about the age of the culture in your story, i.e., are the people part of an ancient civilization, a newly formed group within an established culture, pioneer colonists, etc
.In the Sectors, one of my world building tenets is that many worlds have been found to have similar species, and human or humanlike races. I leave open to speculation the root cause as to why that should be. Ancient visitors? Or? Mahjundar is the same, with its own unique flora and fauna as well.
What food or drink is available to your characters?
While on the planet Mike eats the same diet as the locals, and has had injects against any toxins that might affect a Terran-descent human. I’d say the main thing everyone has to watch out for is the local black wine, which is highly intoxicating!
In what ways was it helpful to have a map (or sketch of one) for your story? (Provide a link to an image, if available)
I don’t typically do a map or a sketch for my books. I hold the information in my head. My only exception to date has been when I write stories set on large spaceships, where I have drawn a rough model and identified which decks hold what.
What’s your advice for writers who want to create a solid background for their story world?
Make it interesting, be consistent in your details and let your imagination soar. That’s the best part about science fiction – you can establish literally any setting for your story.
You’ve posed a number of detailed questions on language, culture, world building, research, etc., which I’ve chosen not to address today because my primary emphasis in any of my novels is the characters, the romance, the action and the adventure. Long ago I established my overarching framework for the Sectors, which is my interstellar civilization. I do of course develop details for whatever planet the particular story is taking place on, but not to the depth your excellent questions were attempting to measure. As I write each novel I may do research on isolated facets of the particular story – for Mahjundar I spent a lot of time reading up on various causes of blindness, for example, but I also drew heavily on my personal experience with a close friend from college who was blind. I had previously done much research on the Aztecs and the Mayans, aspects of which I applied to some of the indigenous societies my characters encountered. The character Tlazomiccuhtli, the ancient and blood thirsty god worshipped by one tribe on this planet, is based in part on my own encounter with a truly horrific Aztec deity (in statue form luckily) in a Mexico City museum years ago.
Google and Wikipedia are an author’s friends when doing research, as places to start at any rate, and identify other sources to dive more deeply into as needed. (I do have a huge personal library of scholarly tomes to consult for the research that goes into my ancient Egyptian paranormal romances.)
But to a large extent, the conditions encountered on any planet in my scifi universe derive from my own imagination and will only be as detailed and pervasive as the story I’m trying to tell demands. So some of the books may have a lot of planet-specific worldbuilding development – Escape from Zulaire for example – and others quite a bit less.
Specific science fiction genre: Romance, action adventure
Book heat level (based on movie ratings): PG13+
Publisher Self
Amazon https://www.amazon.com/Mission-Mahjundar-Veronica-Scott-ebook/dp/B00MRLXPQ6
Barnes and Noble https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/mission-to-mahjundar-veronica-scott/1120154499?ean=2940150562431
iBooks https://itunes.apple.com/us/book/mission-to-mahjundar/id909676155?ls=1&mt=11
Kobo https://www.kobo.com/us/en/ebook/mission-to-mahjundarVeronica Scott Social Media
Best Selling Science Fiction, Fantasy and Paranormal Romance author, as well as the “SciFi Encounters” columnist for the USA Today Happy Ever After blog, Veronica Scott grew up in a house with a library as its heart. Dad loved science fiction, Mom loved ancient history and Veronica thought there needed to be more romance in everything. When she ran out of books to read, she started writing her own stories.
Seven time winner of the SFR Galaxy Award, as well as a National Excellence in Romance Fiction Award, Veronica is also the proud recipient of a NASA Exceptional Service Medal relating to her former day job, not her romances! She recently was honored to read the part of Star Trek Crew Member in the audiobook production of Harlan Ellison’s “The City On the Edge of Forever.”
Blog: https://veronicascott.wordpress.com/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/vscotttheauthor
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/pages/Veronica-Scott/177217415659637?ref=hl
Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/5428500.Veronica_Scott
Amazon Author Page: http://www.amazon.com/Veronica-Scott/e/B006CUCJ92/
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