Seven Days And Counting Before A CLOCKWORK CHRISTMAS/CRIME WAVE IN A CORSET Releases!

Yippee, I have my newly uncrashed laptop back from the Geek Squad (how I love thee and your awesome warranties ^_^).  That means I’m now ready to share a couple insights and one more excerpt from my Christmas novella, A CRIME WAVE IN A CORSET! (P.S., you might need this for TRR’s YES! Party)

First off, I’m THRILLED that People Magazine’s Sexiest Man Alive 2011 is none other than Bradley Cooper.  Why?  Because my hero, Roderick Coddington, was fashioned after Bradley Cooper (do I have AWESOME taste when it comes to spotting a good man-morsel, or what?).  Those eyes, that tousled, golden brown hair, that elegant, rangy bod… Seriously, I have no idea where I was going with this, but who cares?  We’re talking about Bradley Cooper/Roderick Coddington.

Second thing… for several years I’ve had to push aside this insistent Christmassy-type idea about some sort of thieving anti-heroine who had to learn that giving—especially the gift of her closely guarded heart—was so much more satisfying than the taking that’s usually involved in a high-stakes heist (though if there was a heist involved as well, so much the better).  The problem was I couldn’t find the right background for it.  Then there was the submission call for a Steampunk Christmas from Carina Press.  Hello, perfect fit.   Heh.

Now you’re interested, right?  Of course, right!  Take a gander at the blurb for CRIME WAVE IN A CORSET:

Roderick Coddington is on a mission to make Cornelia Peabody pay. After identifying her as the thief who stole a priceless Fabergé egg from his dying sister, he finds her and shackles a deadly timepiece to her arm. If she doesn't return the egg by Christmas morning, she will die.

Normally seven days is more than enough time for Cornelia to carry out the perfect crime, but Roderick's intrusion into her life is beyond distracting. He challenges her mind, and ignites her body with desire she's never felt before. But worst of all, he threatens the independence she values above all else...

As Roderick spends time with Cornelia, he realizes there's a lonely soul hidden beneath her beautiful but criminal veneer. Falling for a thief wasn't part of Roderick's plan, but plans can change and he has no intention of letting another priceless treasure get away from him.

And here’s one last little peek at CRIME WAVE IN A CORSET's official excerpt before it releases next Monday, December 5^th! (And if you’re playing TRR’s game, your hint is in this excerpt!):

EXCERPT:

“What is it you wanted to show me?”

“This.” With a dark enthusiasm that unnerved her, he led the way to a workbench and turned on an overhead light. “It took me five months to perfect this prototype’s design. I finally had success when I read about Edison’s more stable bamboo filament in his latest electric bulb. Once I had that final piece to the puzzle I was able to create this beauty, as well as its twin now locked to your wrist. What do you think?”

Cornelia moved in for a closer look. It was a tiny clockwork, with an odd configuration of twin miniature pendulums on either side of the filament he had mentioned. Behind the swinging pendulums was a copper backing that seemed to glow with a strange bluish light. “What am I looking at?”

“It’s a type of battery that gets its charge from perpetual motion.”

“Perpetual motion is a myth. Rudolf Clausius’s laws of thermodynamics prove that categorically.”

He shot her a quick glance before he latched the clockwork around the dummy’s waist. “While it’s true that nothing stays in motion forever and does, in fact, need an outward impetus to keep going, the mere beat of your heart and the flow of blood through your veins is enough kinetic energy to keep your timepiece going for seven days, while at the same time accumulating an electrical charge within its battery casing. Where did you get your education?”

“I thought you claimed a guttersnipe like me didn’t have one. Whatever are you doing?”

“Demonstrating what will happen to you if you don’t agree to steal back what you took from me and mine.”

Her quick intake was audible, but she couldn’t help it. In a night full of surprises, that was a lulu. “You want me to steal something for you?”

“Steal something back,” he stressed, his tone so cold it would have made the North Pole seem balmy. “An egg, to be precise. A very special, very rare egg. Now do you remember?”

Of course she did. It wasn’t every day she came across a magnificent Fabergé egg with a surprise of a solid gold cherub hidden inside. It had been so heart-stoppingly beautiful she had almost kept it for herself.

He made a sound of impatience. “No need to answer, I can see you do. Which means we’re making progress.” With brisk efficiency he did something with the clockwork, then turned to pull her back. “Now that you know what I want, you need to understand what will happen to you if I don’t have the egg back by midnight, Christmas morning.”

Before she could ask what he meant, a sickening odor of ozone and smoke billowed out along with a harsh electric buzzing that made her eardrums quiver in protest. Right before her horrified eyes, the dressmaker’s dummy shuddered and jived while sparks flew in every direction. It toppled over even as it burst into flame before the buzzing slowly growled to a sullen end. Roderick was there in an instant with a pail of water, dousing it with motions both unsurprised and repetitive, and in the part of her brain that still worked Cornelia now grasped why the dummy was so scorched. Before locking his timepiece on her wrist, the ever-meticulous Roderick Coddington had tested his electrocution device over and over, just to make sure it worked. Just to make sure it could kill.

Just to make sure it could kill her.

“So there you have it.” Roderick turned to her with a vicious simile of a smile while smoke hung about them in a poisonous haze. “Tick-tock goes the clock, Peabody. You have seven days to right a terrible wrong. Or barring that, seven days to live. Either way I’ll be satisfied.”

I’m so excited this story is being told at last.  Christmas, love, and one tiny, little killer timepiece.  What’s not to love? ;)

New Excerpt From ZERO FACTOR!

Wheeeee, just a little over a week away from unveiling ZERO FACTOR, my very first release from the magnificent Samhain Publishing!

To celebrate, I've got another bit of excerpty goodness on tap -- Via and Locke's first kiss (which had absolutely nothing to do with love, and everything to do with staying alive).  Enjoy!

Via knew her life was over. If she were honest with herself, part of her had known it the moment she had left the safety of the agridome. People like her could never put themselves in a position where they would be within spitting distance of the militia, much less work hand in hand with them. To do so was akin to bathing in jet fuel, then playing with a lighter.

And yet she had gone. Like a lamb to slaughter, she had gone.

It was okay, though. As long as she could save the others, she could be at peace with what had to be done now. Not that she was some kind of freaky saint or anything. It was just that as she’d sat in the transport drowning in images of what was to come, she had reached a very basic conclusion—she would rather die than live with the knowledge that she could have done something, but didn’t.

So she wasn’t a saint, and she sure as hell wasn’t even nodding acquaintances with that thing called bravery. If anything, she was too much of a coward to live with the guilt of surviving while everyone else got blown into unrecognizable bits.

“Via? What the hell—?”

She heard Weddo’s shocked voice, but it didn’t matter. What mattered was focusing on what she knew, what she saw, and pushing it with all her might into Locke. She wasn’t sure if she was doing it right. Hell, she didn’t even know if she was doing anything more than simply kissing a stranger and making a ginormous ass of herself. She had only done this sort of thing once before when she was fifteen, and it had been a total accident back then.

By degrees, the frenzied panic boiling through her blood eased like a tight fist unfurling, and new, thoroughly unexpected sensations began to seep in through the smothering veil of fear. For just a heartbeat the universe seemed to pause, a collective holding of breath while even the sound of the bustling city’s daily life came to a gentle stop. For Via, there was only this fragile moment as her mouth molded to his, and a shocking thrill of pleasure bloomed like fireworks in her brain when his lips softened and returned the pressure with interest. Her booted feet barely touched the ground as she kept her arms wrapped tightly around his strong neck, and delight mingled with relief when his free arm curled about her waist to bring her fully against the rock-solid length of his battle-hardened warrior’s body. His breath was warm, his taste tantalizing. The seductive nuzzling of his silk-over-steel lips against hers invited her untutored mouth to explore deeper, and she saw no reason why she should resist when she knew they were living on borrowed time.

A tremulous note of discord whispered from her psyche into his, a never-ending ricochet rippling noiselessly between them. The pleasure bounced back and forth as well, doubling and trebling as it went, but threaded through it was what the vision had shown her. But that was okay too. If this was to be her last moment of life, she was determined to pour every ounce of joy, vitality and pleasure she could into this kiss. If anything, she was happy for this final opportunity to go out with a bang.

“Lieutenant Locke, attention!”

It was the strangest thing, was all Via could think while her pulse pounded in her ears and in the lips that had become the most sensitive part of her body. It was as though she and this man—a militia man, for God’s sake—had discovered that with a kiss, they could create a magical little sphere where only they existed, and nothing of the gritty, desperate, dangerous place that was their world could encroach on their private slice of perfection. Then her lips drifted like a dream away from his, and the restless throb of the ever-bustling city once again filled her ears. But nothing felt the same. She wasn’t the same. As mad as it sounded, she felt changed from the inside out.

Were kisses supposed to change the world?

Via opened eyes she couldn’t remember closing, and gazed up in dazed confusion at the man she held with all the passionate fervor of a long-time lover. Where was the explosion? Had she interrupted the sequence of events? Was everyone safe?

Everyone except her, of course. Her safe life was officially over now that she had revealed to a gun-toting jarhead member of the militia that she was a psionic.

Dayum.

Titles (Or Lack Thereof), a Blurb and an Excerpt from ZERO FACTOR!

So... my newly contracted holiday steampunk project doesn't have a title. It did, once. But the powers-that-be at Carina Press have decided the title TICK TOCK GOES THE CLOCK had to go. Don't ask me why. Personally, I'm putting the blame on that perennial class-act, Ke$ha. :)


So while I wait on pins and needles to find out what the steampunk project will eventually be called, my mind can't help but drift onto another project of mine. Specifically, ZERO FACTOR.


I'm just a little over five weeks out from its August 30th release date, and I have to say I'm getting pretty nervous. Not the queasy, I'm-going-to-my-doom nervous, like I was sort of expecting. This is the kind of nervous excitement that comes with the anticipation of Christmas, or a longed-for vacation, or maybe even the arrival of a brand-new baby. I'm trying to be calm about it, because being a spazz about my cyberpunk novella's release will only make me more nuts, but it's impossible. I. Am. Excited.

When Samhain offered an open call for novellas for a cyberpunk anthology, an idea I'd had for some time sprang immediately to the forefront, molding itself into a futuristic frame before I was even fully aware of it.  You see, this idea -- the concept of a psychometric empath having to hide her powers from a Nazi-like state -- was just so COOL, I've wanted to write about it for years.  But I could never figure out how to make it work.  If it weren't for Samhain constantly keeping themselves on the cutting edge of fiction and exploring subgenres like cyberpunk, the story of Via and Locke probably would never have been told. 


Have I mentioned recently how much I love Samhain? If I haven't, shame on me. I love Samhain with an undying fire, and I hope I'm lucky enough to publish with them as long as my brain is capable of coming up with stories.

So without further ado, time to post one of the two official excerpts from ZERO FACTOR. Enjoy!
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Armed and dangerous…

A Cybershock story.

Born a psionic—a rare human prized by the government for her gifts—agridome worker Via Brede lives by two simple rules: slip into stealth mode whenever the cybernetic-enhanced militia is near. And never remove the gloves that block her psychic ability.

During a routine delivery, a tear in her glove connects her with what should be her worst nightmare. A meched-out soldier with bulging muscles and a scarred face that makes her heart pound like a pneumatic drill. She also envisions his death in an attack that happens…now.

Locke’s typically ho-hum mission goes sideways when the stunning, green-eyed bubble farmer plants a sensual kiss that sets fire to every one of his remaining man-nerves. He also sees her vision. His own commander is about to kill him.

He needs Via to find out why. First step is to get her to Old Las Vegas without succumbing to a raw, sexual need that burns in him like fever. Getting there will be a snap. Getting out alive—and winning her trust—might be a little tougher.

Product Warnings

This title contains mild violence, blow-your-mind Psionic sex, buns of steel (literally) and the usual hanky-panky at a bordello. Author is not responsible for side effects, including locked-and-loaded hunks taking your dreams by force.



 And here is ZERO FACTOR's first official EXCERPT.  It's the entire first chapter, and here's a hint: everything that is seen in the first chapter is important in the last.  Pay attention now. ^_^