HERE BE NEWS for Monday June 23, 2025

 Monday June 23, 2025 

Welcome to HERE BE NEWS, where each monday we bring you all the latest from the fantasy romance authors at Here Be Magic:

New!

RUNNER’S MOON: Neeallt

Runner’s Moon Series,

Book 6

Contemporary Sci-Fi Romance

By Linda Mooney

Word Count: 68.7K

$3.99 e / $10.99 p

Mitchel Timmons and her friends just wanted to enjoy a day at the park, regardless of the threat of the Arra hanging over the planet, and more specifically, their town. They want to be able to live their lives, despite the warnings. They figure that as long as they’re home by nightfall, they’ll be safe, or so they thought.

When the girls disappear, Mitchel’s father blames the Ruinos, for good reason. He’d heard her frantic phone call and knows it was them who ambushed his daughter and her friends in the park. How can he be expected to rely on other Ruinos to stage a rescue?

Mitchel hates the Ruinos as much as her father does. She never expects one of those aliens to latch onto her and protect her from other Ruinos as well as the Arra when she’s held captive aboard the Arran spaceship. In fact, although she doesn’t want to admit it, she feels safe when she’s around him. Which is why, when she sees the chance to escape, she takes him back down to Earth with her.

Now her heart’s divided between wanting to still hate the Ruinos and caring for Neeallt, who’s beginning to mean a lot to her. Unfortunately, the town is divided between those who support the Ruinos and those who don’t, even though the Ruinos are working hard to blend in, hoping to find their mates among the humans as they try to make an honest life for themselves. Their common enemy is the Arra, who are orbiting the planet and waiting for their chance to kidnap the human females in order to force the Ruinos to mate with them as a way to increase their numbers.

Despite the good the Ruinos have done, the townspeople want the aliens gone, and Mitchel is faced with losing Neeallt or staying with him. Maybe it’s time they both move on from Tumbril Harbor and find some place safer. A place they can call home.

No one was prepared for the Arra’s next move, despite all their precautions.

Warning! Contains Halloween eyes, a giant tin can, oatmeal with sliced cucumbers (or mango), lavender, a blockade and a diversion, that pause-y thing, and one young woman willing to fight the whole town and the Arra for the alien she's come to love.

Excerpt and Buy Links: https://lindamooney.com/RunnersMoon.htm 

New! RUNNER’S MOON: Neeallt, Runner’s Moon Series, Book 6, a Contemporary Sci-Fi Romance by Linda Mooney

New!

RUNNER’S MOON: Neeallt

Runner’s Moon Series,

Book 6

Contemporary Sci-Fi Romance

By Linda Mooney

Word Count: 68.7K

$3.99 e / $10.99 p

Mitchel Timmons and her friends just wanted to enjoy a day at the park, regardless of the threat of the Arra hanging over the planet, and more specifically, their town. They want to be able to live their lives, despite the warnings. They figure that as long as they’re home by nightfall, they’ll be safe, or so they thought.

When the girls disappear, Mitchel’s father blames the Ruinos, for good reason. He’d heard her frantic phone call and knows it was them who ambushed his daughter and her friends in the park. How can he be expected to rely on other Ruinos to stage a rescue?

Mitchel hates the Ruinos as much as her father does. She never expects one of those aliens to latch onto her and protect her from other Ruinos as well as the Arra when she’s held captive aboard the Arran spaceship. In fact, although she doesn’t want to admit it, she feels safe when she’s around him. Which is why, when she sees the chance to escape, she takes him back down to Earth with her.

Now her heart’s divided between wanting to still hate the Ruinos and caring for Neeallt, who’s beginning to mean a lot to her. Unfortunately, the town is divided between those who support the Ruinos and those who don’t, even though the Ruinos are working hard to blend in, hoping to find their mates among the humans as they try to make an honest life for themselves. Their common enemy is the Arra, who are orbiting the planet and waiting for their chance to kidnap the human females in order to force the Ruinos to mate with them as a way to increase their numbers.

Despite the good the Ruinos have done, the townspeople want the aliens gone, and Mitchel is faced with losing Neeallt or staying with him. Maybe it’s time they both move on from Tumbril Harbor and find some place safer. A place they can call home.

No one was prepared for the Arra’s next move, despite all their precautions.

Warning! Contains Halloween eyes, a giant tin can, oatmeal with sliced cucumbers (or mango), lavender, a blockade and a diversion, that pause-y thing, and one young woman willing to fight the whole town and the Arra for the alien she's come to love.

Excerpt and Buy Links: https://lindamooney.com/RunnersMoon.htm 

HERE BE NEWS for Monday June 9, 2025

 Monday June 09, 2025 

Welcome to HERE BE NEWS, where each monday we bring you all the latest from the fantasy romance authors at Here Be Magic:

Thursday June 5, 2025: Nicole Luiken shares the results of her nautical research with us in her post, It's All About Ships

After three tours of duty, and serving the last four years overseas, Griffin Strong is looking forward to finally returning home and living out his life without bombings and bloodshed. After a 300-mile drive home, a quick trip through the car wash ends in another reality. An eerie, fog-covered reality where he is all alone…or so he thought.  

With no electricity, cars that don’t function, and guns that won’t fire, Griff has to find protection for himself, but protection against what exactly? What the hell even happened? Survival instincts kicking in, he stocks up on whatever he can carry, and sets out on his own.

Griff soon learns that he’s not completely alone, although life of any form is rare to come across, but whom can he trust?

When the subway in Manhattan dumps Natalia Westfall in a snow-covered, deserted town far from New York, she’s left alone, frozen, and desperate. Hope lies in a uniformed military man, but will he want to be weighed down by a sick, weak female like her? Griff takes a chance, and it doesn’t take him long to learn she’s anything but weak.

Facing thirst, starvation, acid rain, enemies, and extreme temps--what will get them first? The odds are stacked against them, and all they can count on is each other.

Warning! Contains a red raincoat, a handy dandy trowel, first dibs, Boom!, strained coffee, an antique car, an implausible but possible theory, a rain of sand, and two strangers finding themselves thrust into a situation where their lives depend on trusting each other.

June Box Set

The VEILS Trilogy
(blurbs and excerpts)

Now Available as a Box Set! The VEILS Trilogy by Linda Mooney

After three tours of duty, and serving the last four years overseas, Griffin Strong is looking forward to finally returning home and living out his life without bombings and bloodshed. After a 300-mile drive home, a quick trip through the car wash ends in another reality. An eerie, fog-covered reality where he is all alone…or so he thought.  

With no electricity, cars that don’t function, and guns that won’t fire, Griff has to find protection for himself, but protection against what exactly? What the hell even happened? Survival instincts kicking in, he stocks up on whatever he can carry, and sets out on his own.

Griff soon learns that he’s not completely alone, although life of any form is rare to come across, but whom can he trust?

When the subway in Manhattan dumps Natalia Westfall in a snow-covered, deserted town far from New York, she’s left alone, frozen, and desperate. Hope lies in a uniformed military man, but will he want to be weighed down by a sick, weak female like her? Griff takes a chance, and it doesn’t take him long to learn she’s anything but weak.

Facing thirst, starvation, acid rain, enemies, and extreme temps--what will get them first? The odds are stacked against them, and all they can count on is each other.

Warning! Contains a red raincoat, a handy dandy trowel, first dibs, Boom!, strained coffee, an antique car, an implausible but possible theory, a rain of sand, and two strangers finding themselves thrust into a situation where their lives depend on trusting each other.

June Box Set

The VEILS Trilogy
(blurbs and excerpts)

It's All About the Ships

 I've been doing a lot of research into ships lately. Both early sailing ships (the cog and the caravel) for my fantasy novel The Bastard Prince and spaceships for an SF novel. 

It's tough going. 

So look, I live in Alberta (Canada) which is basically land-locked. I've probably only been on a boat less than a dozen times in my life--five ferry rides, a harbor taxi, a canoe, a rowboat and two speedboats (once whale-watching, the other trying and failing to learn to waterski.) Not a lot of experience there. I've never been out on the open ocean out of sight of land, always just protected straits and harbors and lakes. I've only experienced gentle waves and sunny skies, no storms.

 A lot of my ship scenes are written from the point-of-view of my heroine, who knows nothing of ships, which helps, but some of the scenes have to be from my reformed-pirate-captain hero.

 Things I've researched: How did the caravel revolutionize sailing? What were gunwales called before the invention of cannons meant the sides of ships had to be reinforced? How many masts and what dimensions did the early caravels have? When were grapples invented? Did Vikings have sea battles? I'm sure there will be lots more before I'm done.

Writing about spaceships is both worse and better. Better, because the novel is set a hundred years in the future and so I can hand-wave some of it as something that will be invented later. Worse, because I do need to wrap my brain around some of the science and orbital mechanics. My characters don't have to navigate but I need to ground my space travel in enough reality that readers who do know some science won't be wincing.

(I once stopped reading an SFR book because I could not accept the huge coincidence of their spaceship having a breakdown close to a prison planet. Um, space is LARGE. The chances of this happening inside a solar system much less right beside a planet is probably a million to one.) 

So  ships. So many ships. So much research. Wish me luck! 

 

HERE BE NEWS for Monday June 2, 2025

 

 Monday June 02, 2025 

Welcome to HERE BE NEWS, where each monday we bring you all the latest from the fantasy romance authors at Here Be Magic:

New Release From PG Forte

Que Será, Syrah

Pour Decisions: Book Three

​

They may be keeping secrets and telling lies, but a little white wine never hurt anyone.​

 

Allegra

 

It’s not every day that you inherit one-third of a winery. I should be on top of the world, floating on Cloud Wine, as they say. Instead, don’t you just know it? I’m about to make one of the biggest mistakes of my life. And that’s saying something. My family has always viewed me as something of a screw-up, not always fairly. But in this case? They’re not only dead right about me messing things up; they don’t even know the half of it. Yet.

​

Complicating my quest to redeem myself, earn my sisters’ respect, and help them turn our winery into a straight fire success, is my low-key relationship with Sheriff’s Deputy Clay Romero. Sure, there are risks involved in sleeping with the enemy, but ‘what’s meant to be will find a way,’ right? And whether Clay believes it or not, I know we’re fated. With a capital F.

 

Clay

 

We’re Capital F somethin’ all right; but I don’t think it’s fate. Ever since Legs (AKA Allegra Martinelli) blew back into town, I’ve been flirting with disaster. Literally. I doubt that woman’s ever met a rule that she didn’t want to at least bend. And, as luck would have it, it’s my job to try and stop her. I love my job, and I think I love her. But there’s not enough wine in Napa to convince me that I’ll be able to hang on to them both. 

​

Legs keeps likening us to Romeo and Juliet.  And as I keep trying to remind her; that kind of story tends not to end well. I’m sure there are exceptions, but are we gonna be one of them? I guess we’ll find out.

​

Releases Tomorrow: May 27, 2025

Pre-Order Now: https://books2read.com/Que-Sera-Syrah