The Farradae --Alien Blood

In my upcoming release Alien Blood my couple Gema and Kellac find out the wilderness planet they have been on actually has a settlement. A ship called the Farradae made an emergency landing there about two hundred years ago. Mixed ancestry colonists--Terrans and the humanoid Zh Cle' from the Zh Cle' Reservation Worlds carved a settlement out on the isolated planet.


And it is lovely. White sand beaches, clear aqua green water. Graceful homes made for beauty as well as practicality.

 Lorl is one of the secondary characters in Alien Blood. She is from Toph, a high tech world with a PureGen Constitution. Only Lab perfected humans can be citizens. Lorl has rarely even interacted with normal humans of Terran descent, let alone the alien humanoid Zh Cle' (pronounced zhuh clay').

Here is a tiny snippet from Lorl's point of view.


Lorl sat on the periphery of the city square, her son on her lap. A cool ocean breeze wafted their faces, hot in the afternoon sun. Lorl gave Ulric another sip from the mug of fruit tea, which he gulped down in appreciation. This was so much better than the camp at the dark lake. Even being around people with shiny hard wing covers and tails with hidden barbs wasn't making her hyperventilate like the swarms of biting insects and that awful rotting smell that came from the marshy land around that lake.

The forest beyond the city was odd. It scared her. She didn't like wilderness, especially alien wilderness. She kept her gaze on the village, beach and sea beyond.

Her country men had lied--they had lied about the planet being free of inhabitants, and they had claimed the planet was a Seeded world, with flora and fauna similar to Terra. The northern continent was Seeded, it seemed. But this area was alien. Overly large trees, neon bright flowers, eerie animal calls. She'd heard people actually lived in that bizarre forest. It was hard to believe.

 

She hugged Ulric a little closer. What those first families must have experienced, alone in that wild strange forest, trying to keep their little ones safe.

Lorl needed to keep her little ones safe. She had stood before the Grandmother's Circle this morning, and asked for refuge, for herself, Ulric and the two children still asleep in stasis tubes. Her homeworld was devastated by war, she had no funds for travel to a safe place. That left New Prague, with its domes, mining and poisonous spores. Kellac said she could probably find work in the mining district. It didn't sound like a nice place to be a single mother, though. She was hesitant to accept Kellac's view of New Prague because he came from its wealthiest family. She'd be just another mining contract worker.


The Grandmother's had offered her a position as a cook in the communal meal room, with a snug little house. She might also teach mathematics to their older youth. Rivier would speak to her about that. She'd have all the necessities, plus this lovely location. It was her best option.


She shied away from thoughts about Rivier. With his brilliant green eyes and  bright red gold hair he was far more attractive than she expected any Zh Cle' to be. But what did she know about Zh Cle'?  The tales she'd been told on her homeworld didn't resemble this community at all.


 Kellac, Gema and Dooley would be surprised when they learned she was staying. But her little family would be safe here. Safety was more important than Pure Genetics. She was beginning to wonder if Pure Genetics had any real meaning at all.


They would live in that little white house with the arches and patio overlooking the sea. Her son would play in the sand and learn to sail those Farradae solar boats. Someday perhaps Toph would be at peace again and she could attempt to find her parents and sisters.


Considering the situation and the ugliness she'd allowed in her life, her future was better than she deserved.  If any grace of life was being bestowed on her--as the Grandmothers claimed-- it was due to the innocent children in her care.

What I'm Reading and Other Stuff

I've been spending time in the Wastelands. I'm not reading them in publishing order and don't think you have to. Dystopian erotic romance with wonderful covers. I will get the other two on my next shopping spree!

Also reading a couple Harlequins:

The intrigue is by a new-to-me author--but I've read lots of Julie Leto and like her.

Road Trip and Mama Brag:

My oldest daughter, who is president of the high school debate team, was chosen to go to Girl's State! I'm proud of her for her hard work.

Yesterday we drove her to Powell, WY. We took the scenic route, because we all love Wyoming scenery. Spring, when everything is still green, is extra special I think. There were lots of antelope-- we had to stop on the highway for a herd to cross. Here are some pictures(from the net, I'm not a photographer!)

Wind River Canyon, Wind River Mountains, and Pronghorn Antelopes.

Powell WY is a small, pretty town not far from Cody. It is about 160 miles from us. The twins and I will drive up early next Saturday to pick her up.

New Author? Need a website? CHEAP?

Many new ebook authors can't or do not want to spend big bucks on a
website.

But still, they want a site. They need a web presence.

There are free websites WITHOUT page adds out there. I have mine at Weebly. I've heard wordpress will redirect a domain name, too.I bought my domain name, melisseaires.com, (website )and then did a redirect so my free website has my domain name.

Being a bit of a control freak, I like being able to do all aspects of the site. I put up html for books and blurbs in a simple way--I create it here in blogger, switch to html and copy it, then paste the html into my website's html template. It is no more difficult than posting html into a yahoo loop post.

I am just using a template weebly offers. I know I could scrap that and find a template to purchase. but I like my site so have no interest in starting afresh.

Lazy Sunday Writing Thoughts

I've been thinking about shifter stories. My best selling story is a shifter story(Del Fantasma: Tiger Juice). The fan mails I've received have been about the shifter--more shifters wanted. So I've been thinking about ideas, waiting for something to churn up from the muse.

Most of my writing lately is in series that are familiar to me, so planning this shifter story is different. All new stuff. I know who my shifter is, I know she turns into mythological creature, and I know she is being exploited. When am I going to write it? I don't know. Setting--contemporary? Space western? I don't know yt It isn't on my schedule, but the schedules I make for myself are flexible--until I have a contract.

My muse has been churning out new ideas lately, so I've been making new files with three or four pages of a scene or back story--enough to capture the  idea.

I gave up on my contemporary for Harlequin idea. It morphed into a futuristic Harlequin Presents--something like  The Sustainable Vertical City CEO's Nanny's Secret Passion. Maybe not a marketable story.

Cybot Awakened Featured on Galaxy Express

Galaxy Express --one of my favorite blogs--featured Cybot Awakened! And Heather liked it!  What Surprised Me About Cybot Awakened

Where Do We Go From Here? My Muse And Cybots

 

This looks like my asteroid but is actually called Hell's Half Acre. It is about 50 miles from my home here in Wyoming.

I have a novella to edit and a contemporary WIP rough draft to work on. It is a frigid day here in Wyoming with a little snow and slick roads, I'm wearing comfy sweats, my pepto pink snuggie is nearby and I have a diet Dr Pepper for for a tasty refreshment.  All set for a productive writing day.




But my muse can only think about Lirielle. She wakes up wedged in a crevice on an asteroid--and she remembers who she is. Was.


She missed the battle, the one where the cybots were supposed to take over a small base. She's been blacked out for nearly two days. And now she is all alone with a power pack ebbing away.


Lucky for her there are cybot carcases, some with working power packs. She can stay alive for awhile.


And finally help comes, she hopes. It's a ship, at least. A little banged up and painted in garish colors. Odd. She shouts for help with an amplifier, in several languages.


The ship responds by shooting a heavy mesh net. Captured. The net's power field shorts out her power, all goes black again. She wakes up on the floor, the net now magnetized and holding her down as the small ship flips and tosses, evading fire...


Where do we go from here?(That was a song in the Buffy Musical, btw) I'm humming it now.


We know THE HERO captured her. We know he was scavenging tech from the battle field. We know he's hot. Hmmm. This does seem to be going somewhere fun.

My New Toy!

I have a new toy!
This is a Palm Tungsten E. I bought it on ebay, really cheap, around $40 including shipping, and it has a 30 day warranty. There are more just like it from the same seller if anyone out there is looking at cheap ebook reading devices.

I've had very good experiences with used electronics from ebay. My Alphasmart and my other Palm were both barely used and purchased very cheap on ebay.

Previously I read on a Palm Z22. The Tungsten E -TE- has a larger screen, about half an inch wider and longer that the Z22. It also has a sd card slot, an mp3 player and the battery is replaceable for about $25--all upgrades from the Z22.

I added a 2g sd card (sale price $22) and currently have 75 books and 4 albums loaded--and I still have lots of memory. I might fiddle with loading a video, and I plan to load pictures just for fun. I'm not a big game player but there is plenty of room for games.

The TE does go through the battery charge faster and needs to be recharged every night, while I could recharge the Z22 every two to three days. I may upgrade the battery, plus having a back up battery is not a bad idea.

The TE has more word processing functions than the Z22 and I plan to explore those in the next week, also.

I uploaded Mobipocket( which is free) as my ereader but the TE will read adobe pdf's also.

I suspect there is away to upload blog and news feeds and eventually I'll look into that since there is plenty of space in memory for daily feeds.

If you are looking for an e book reader but don't want to pay the price for a Kindle or Sony, you might want to consider one of these. Plus it has the normal PDA data functions for phone numbers, lists, notes etc.

Changing Gears--the life of a beginning writer.

I had two contracted works, but one publishing house lost the editor I was working with. Around the same time a proposal I sent MONTHS ago and almost forgotten about got back to me--she wants the full. So the project I thought I'd be editing is back in my files. I will send it out again but first I'm going to get the requested full ready.

My other contracted project is making progress, did all the authors pages recently. The cover will be the next big thing!

Hmmm, what else? I changed the look of this blog so it would match up with my website. I learned how to do an Iframe and embedded it! My Website!

I've been reading alot! Sometimes at work we have five or ten minutes between calls (I work the helpline for customer service employees several hours a day). With my Palm Pilot keeping place for me, I'm able to pick up wherever I stopped reading.

Here are some of the books I've read in the past few months. Most I read on my Palm Pilot, but some were hardback from my local library.

Jayne Castle, Scifi/alien romance:



The Del Fantasma Series:

Really hot vampires--I can hardly wait for the next book!

An autobuy author, Karen Templeton. I loved her humorous voice and finely drawn characters.

Writing-- Career or Hobby?

My writing is a source of both delight and frustration to me.

I think my biggest issues are time and indecision.

Time is obviously a problem since I'm a full time working mom. There are times where my priorities cannot be writing. Also my writing physical set up is not the best. In a small house with a family of five it is hard to find peace and quiet! Lucky for my writing I spent many years teaching preschool and am great at tuning out ordinary conversations.

But indecision is the bigger problem. What should i work on now? Who should I sub to? Should I invest more work into this publisher, or that publisher, or try to get in with Stupendous EPublisher? Should I go for that series? Would anyone buy that high fantasy with not really humans?

I think too much. Some things I just can't know. Sometimes I wait for a green light that will never come.

I do know there is no sure thing or magic formula to writing success. Yet still I hesitate!

I think this issue is what I really need to get to work on!

I have two new publishers and know I need to quit being so scattered! It is time to have a plan.

I do have another vampire story set in the same 'vampire world' as RBAV coming from Wild Rose.

And I have a fantasy novel in edits, plus two novella length futuristics in a series, and another futuristic which needs some rewriting, and a paranormal shifter for an established line... In other words, there are several WIPs in my files that could be ready for submission this summer.

And I'm fluttering around looking for a place to land.

This is why I am so good at deadlines. They help me focus. Without them, I flutter.