Tie-in to My Pets in Space 6 Romance!

 

books2read.com/PISA6

My story in Pets in Space 6 is the first in a new many-aliens-universe series called Far Stars. When I was young I adored the original Star Wars Trilogy. In the nineties I had three little girls, the eldest was twenty-two months older than her twin sisters.  I stayed home with them until they were in school. One income is some tricky business, so I kept up my reading habit with books from the library and yard sales. We lived in a big midwest  city back then and often there were yard sales I could walk to in my own neighborhood. One morning, I got an entire box of Star Wars paperbacks for a ridiculously low price. Reading material for months! Afterward, I mailed the books to my brother, who also enjoys scifi books.

When I started the Diaspora Worlds Series I was published by erotic romance publishers, and scifi romance was an almost unknown subgenre. I deliberately chose human aliens to fit the publishers better.

When I was invited to enter a story in Pets in Space 6 I realized I could do anything! Hubby and I had rewatched the Star Wars movies during lockdown and I wanted a plethora of aliens. So I wrote them!

Last week I had a muse attack. The Far Stars has contemporary humans from Earth. Why not write a Christmas in Space story?

 

 

No cover yet, (though I am itching to make one) since we are in the middle of crazy home improvements. But I do have an excerpt!

My heroine, Hayley, a baker from Duluth, is held captive in a cell in a type of jail. (She's actually on the same ship that Mimi, Velvet and the gang escape from in Stranded on Grzbt.) Her fellow captives are not unconscious because they are not considered threats or capable of escape by their captors. 

Excerpt from Cookies in Space:

The other cages held alien women. Most were asleep right now. They seemed friendly, the ones who had the type of mouths that smiled. Stuck like her. Captives.

They rarely saw their captors, bronze-skinned musclemen with white hair. Some had horns like a mountain goat. They did not speak to the women, just sent in small robots to clean the cages and leave a fresh loose knit robe. The captors wore uniforms and  carried tubes that Hayley figured were weapons. 

Thuds, thumps, weird whizzing and zapping noises broke the stillness. The floor tilted for a moment, slamming them all into a wall. Someone nearby gave a whimper, someone else gasped as if in pain.

“What the heck?” Hayley cried as they slid around again.

“I think  perhaps we are being rescued? I hope?” A whispery voice spoke, Hayley’s neighbor to the right, a tiny, ash gray woman with pink leaves for hair and big floppy ears.

Hayley blinked at her in surprise. “I understand you!”

Her neighbor smiled, a cute, v-shaped alien smile. “The captors came when you were sleeping and put in language implants. The rest of us already had them. You must be from a primitive world without interstellar transportation.”

Interstellar.  “So we are on a spaceship?” She had thought that  all along.

“Indeed.”

“Probably captured by slavers?”

A woman across the way spoke up. “Some of us were sold. On my planet, they don’t like mixed bloods.” Her voice was deep and melodic, and her speech was like singing. She had long-lashed eyes, a trunk-like nose and teal skin.

“Yes, we are all rather exotic mixed bloods,” said another, a blue woman with laser green eyes. Her voice was gravelly.