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FORBITTEN
Futuristic, Post-Apocalyptic Romance
by Linda Mooney
Word Count: 58.2K
$3.99 

Not all who are bitten are turned.

After World War III, better known as the Nuclear War, survivors were forced to move underground, where they had a better chance of survival. Those who were caught above ground in the aftermath inevitably died of exposure. However, the animals and vegetation were not so lucky. Although most species survived, they also mutated. And sometimes those mutations reached the remaining human population.

Shaddoe March lives in one of those subterranean bunkers, called SubForty. Her life is nowhere idyllic. No one’s is. But she’s healthy, and that means she has a future. Until, one day, her nightmare becomes reality, and she’s infected.

She is thrown out of the bunker, above ground, unarmed and alone to face the hideous creatures and other Condemned who’ve been discarded to face their inevitable deaths. As she prepares herself for the worst, she finds redemption.

Chyler Comstock was also infected, but he didn’t turn, and he’s not dead. Yet. Neither are the thirty-two other souls who’ve banded together for the sake of survival. When he meets Shaddoe, he’s more than willing to let her join their group, but not until the critical thirty-seven-hour window is passed. If she remains human after that, then she’ll be welcomed.

But, for now, it’s a waiting game, and the world ran out of patience decades ago.

Warning! Contains a beatdown with a broom, shattered solar panels, a deadly lunch tray, radioactive ammo, explosions, and a possible cure that could mean the difference between love cut short, or love everlasting.

Excerpt and buy links.

Bring It Back(list):

Veronica Scott shares an excerpt from book 3 of her alien empath series, Two Against the Stars.
The story: Empathic priestess Carialle has escaped the evil Amarotu Combine, but she’s hardly out of danger. Not when she risks everything to rescue a drugged man from a crooked veterans’ clinic. By lulling the clinic staff to sleep, she reveals her powers. And once again, criminals are after her and her rescuer.

Marcus Valerian, a wounded Special Forces veteran, never expected to have his life threatened by the clinic that’s supposed to help ex-soldiers like him. But when he wakes from a drugged state to find a lovely woman urging him to run–he does. In his family’s remote fishing cabin, he suffers the agony of withdrawal, soothed only by her powers.

In their idyllic hideaway, the two also discover a nova-hot attraction flaring. But can they stay alive long enough for it to become more? Not if the Combine has anything to say–they are not giving up until Marcus is dead and Carialle is their weapon

Buy Links:

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Bring It Back(list) TWO AGAINST THE STARS with Excerpt

I wrote a science fiction romance series of four connected stories involving alien empaths kidnapped by the Sectors crime syndicate and forced to serve their nefarious ends. Each of the empaths receives help from a human hero or heroine and of course there's a Happy Ever After ending in each.

One challenge I faced was in making each story different from the others. (The books are standalone.) When it came time to write Two Against the Stars, I thought well what if the empath, Carialle, has already managed to escape her interstellar mob controller through a twist of fate, and has gone to ground as an undocumented laborer, living off the grid and under the radar...but then she's confronted with a situation she can't ignore and makes the difficult decision to help a stranger...

The story: Empathic priestess Carialle has escaped the evil Amarotu Combine, but she’s hardly out of danger. Not when she risks everything to rescue a drugged man from a crooked veterans’ clinic. By lulling the clinic staff to sleep, she reveals her powers. And once again, criminals are after her and her rescuer.

Marcus Valerian, a wounded Special Forces veteran, never expected to have his life threatened by the clinic that’s supposed to help ex-soldiers like him. But when he wakes from a drugged state to find a lovely woman urging him to run–he does. In his family’s remote fishing cabin, he suffers the agony of withdrawal, soothed only by her powers.

In their idyllic hideaway, the two also discover a nova-hot attraction flaring. But can they stay alive long enough for it to become more? Not if the Combine has anything to say–they are not giving up until Marcus is dead and Carialle is their weapon.

The excerpt:

She lingered to watch the patient as the others left the room, inhaling sharply as her still active senses ‘read’ him.

At his core was the blue fire of a true warrior of Thuun. His aura blazed with it.

Small patches of the dull gray intruded around the edges of the flames, probably from the inject he’d been given. The flames were distorted in a disturbing fashion she’d never seen before, blurry. Odd pools of oily black drifted in the center of his aura, three of them, walled off from each other by twisted knots of  bright white so glaring she had to shut down her observation, which had never happened to her before.

“Hey, you ok?”

She jumped as Peters tapped her shoulder. “Sorry, I—I was surprised at how agitated the man was when he was brought him in.”

“Yeah, the patients are usually a lot farther gone by the time we get them. He’s a big prize.”

“What do you mean?” Disturbed by her vision of the blue flames, as well as those mysterious black pools confined by the white lights, Carialle kept walking toward the next area she was due to clean. Mustn’t appear to be slacking off, especially with the owner on the premises.

“Sweetie, what do you think Mrs. Trang is running here?” Peters kept pace with her.

Puzzled, she said, “A rehab clinic.”

He shook his head. “Yeah sure, in the other part of the building. Over here, she keeps them alive so she can scrape their veterans’ benefits. And she takes the payments for all the fancy therapy, nutritious foods, supplemental meds and special care they’re supposed to be receiving. Nice little racket. Her and the doc are in it together. He directs suitable patients her way and she gives him a kickback.”  Peters leaned closer, as if the way to her reluctant heart was to share his employer’s secrets with her. “This new guy ain’t even supposed to be here. He was Special Forces, badly injured in action, then got himself tortured by the Mawreg before he was rescued. The military ran him through rejuve regeneration to fix his body but his mind is fucked up.  He was supposed to go to a fancy, high end rehab clinic on the eastern continent but Trang and the doc diverted him here.  Forged the records. No one will ever know he existed. Much less find him.”

“Why?” Horrified, she exerted pressure to keep him talking for once. This new patient wasn’t her problem, not at all, but the glimpse of the blue flames rattled her to the core. Assisting a warrior of Thuun was the highest duty of a priestess. But I’m not a priestess and he can’t be a warrior of my god—he’s human. I don’t know him, I owe him nothing. But despite her frantic denials, she was under a compulsion to understand the situation more fully.

“Special Forces are awarded a more generous pension than these other poor bastards who were regular military, maybe five times as much. What she really wants from our new resident though is his veterans’ acres. He’s entitled to prime real estate, courtesy of the grateful Sectors.”

“How will she acquire land meant to be his?”

“The drug she gives them, toranquidol? It destroys the mind over time but there’s a point in the process where free will is gone but the victim retains certain functions. She can make them do anything she wants. She’s gotten rich off of having these poor bastards change their wills, sign over property, you name it. Even married one or two of them along the way for the death benefit and life insurance payouts. He’ll sign the forms to give her the veterans acres.” Peters chuckled, sounding as if he admired Mrs. Trang’s ingenuity at scamming. “I guess what the Sectors authorities don’t know won’t hurt them. I mean, who cares, right?”

“But don’t the patients’ families—”

Peters shook his head. “She and the doc pick their targets carefully. No family, no one to ask awkward questions. Or interfere.”

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Bring It Back(list) STAR CRUISE STOWAWAY Excerpt

I’m really excited to say that Embrace the Romance: Pets In Space 2 anthology is releasing next Tuesday, the 10^th. I thought for today’s backlist feature, I’d share an excerpt from the story I wrote for Pets In Space 1, in 2016, which is now available in my ebook Star Cruise A Novella: Stowaway: With Star Cruise Rescue and Golden Token Short Stories. Yeah, I know, totally unwieldy title…but pretty cover, right? (From Fiona Jayde.)

Here’s the story for Star Cruise: Stowaway:  Cargo Master Owen Embersson is shocked when the Nebula Zephyr’s ship’s cat and her alien sidekick, Midorri, alert him to the presence of a stowaway. He has no idea of the dangerous complications to come nor does he anticipate falling hard for the woman whose life he now holds in his hands. Life aboard the Nebula Zephyr has just become more interesting – and deadly.

Here’s today’s excerpt:

This was the time of day he enjoyed most, when all his crew had gone off duty and the Nebula Zephyr’s top cargo deck was quiet. Sure, more work remained tomorrow to get the cargo squared away properly and ready for the next stop, but there was no rush, being several weeks out. Cargo Master Owen Embersson surveyed his desk in the tiny office on Deck 18. Time to leave the place to the ship’s AI, go have his dinner in his cabin and then resume work on the scale model of a long-vanished temple he was building. This one was incredibly intricate, and he’d charge the customer triple the usual price.

Stepping onto the echoing deck, he called for Moby. She spent most of her evenings hunting vermin lurking among the monstrous crates and containers, but she usually passed the first part of the evening in his cabin, eating the incredibly expensive cat food he had the ship’s AI keep in stock. Not much else to spend his salary on. “Come on, cat, I want my dinner even if you don’t,” he said to the elegant vision in white fur who trotted from the murky recesses of the deck. How she stayed clean when she spent her days prowling the cargo deck, he’d never know.

Purring, she came to his steel-tipped work shoes but evaded his effort to pick her up, moving just out of range the way felines did, as if cats could teleport. Moby scampered toward the towering stacks of cargo then turned. Seeing he’d failed to chase her, she sat, tail twitching, head tilted, eyeing him.

“What‘s the matter with you? I’m not in the mood to throw cat toys and retrieve them right now.” Embersson headed toward the gravlift. Moby regarded the entire ship as her territory and could find his cabin for her dinner when she was hungry.

In the next minute, he nearly tripped as she rubbed his ankles, nipping at one in passing. Swearing, he caught himself with a hand to the bulkhead. “What in the seven hells is wrong with you tonight? Giving me a concussion won’t get you fed.”

Moby yowled at him and ran toward the stacked cargo again.

Figuring she wanted to show him a recent kill, which he’d then have to dispose of, he followed.

Moby moved faster now that she’d gotten him with the program.

By Artist Nyssa Juneau

He followed her around the corner of the pallet the ship had taken on earlier in the day and found Midorri, the Zephyr’s other pet, crouched beside a free trader container. “What mischief have the two of you gotten into now?” he asked Moby. Midorri came aboard the Zephyr originally as the pampered pet of a princess, but after the whole outbreak incident, Sector authorities refused to let the lady disembark on Sector Hub with the undocumented animal, so the ship had kept the odd green fluffball. Dr. Shane was her official owner of record, but the entire crew liked the slightly clumsy but always amusing creature.

Midorri sneezed, as she was often wont to do, allergic to humans perhaps, and flicked her plush prehensile tail before lowering her head and extending her long green tongue to lap at something on the deck.

“Freaking flares, do not tell me we’ve got leaking cargo. Damn free traders and their beat-up equipment.” He hoped Moby hadn’t sampled whatever Midorri was drinking. The alien animal could probably handle anything up to and including nuclear fuel, who knew, but Moby was definitely a terrestrial cat, with a more delicate stomach. He tried to shoo Midorri away from the slowly growing puddle of green goo, dripping from a dented corner of the container. Musta gotten banged when the shuttle crew offloaded the final pallet too fast and had to straighten everything in a rush.  Funny, he’d never have picked this box—well constructed, made from high-quality materials—to be a problem. “I better see what’s in there,” he said to the interested animals.

Moby yowled, startling him as her voice echoed, and Midorri emitted a high-pitched chirping that grated on his ears like a physical assault.

Spurred on by the animals’ distress, which confirmed his own suspicion he faced a genuine problem, Embersson used his cargo master key, which was supposed to open any container on his ship. Nothing happened. Swearing, he tried again. “This free trader’s never shipping anything with us again, idiot forgot to set the damn code for my access. Maeve, can you open this?”

“Of course,” the ship’s AI said. “I haven’t forgotten all my military skills just because I run a cruise ship nowadays.”

“Wait a second.” He stepped aside, encouraging the animals to do so as well. He imagined a gush of whatever was leaking when Maeve did her hacking thing and overrode the container controls.

Midorri tried to climb over his boot to return to the growing puddle.

A loud click echoed in the cargo bay and the seams on the crate glowed yellow, unsealing in a smooth progression along the rim. Sure enough a deluge of liquid followed, but Embersson froze for a moment as he saw what had been inside the crate. Then he was on his knees beside the now-open container, heedless of the green cryo fluid soaking his pants, as he tried to extricate the woman who’d been illegally stored inside.

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About Embrace the Romance: Pets In Space 2, for which I’ve written my first ever rock star romance!:

The pets are back! Embrace the Romance: Pets in Space 2, featuring twelve of today’s leading Science Fiction Romance authors brings you a dozen original stories written just for you! Join in the fun, from the Dragon Lords of Valdier to a trip aboard award-winning author, Veronica Scott’s Nebula Zephyr to journeying back to Luda where Grim is King, for stories that will take you out of this world! Join New York Times, USA TODAY, and Award-winning authors S.E. Smith, M.K. Eidem, Susan Grant, Michelle Howard, Cara Bristol, Veronica Scott, Pauline Baird Jones, Laurie A. Green, Sabine Priestley, Jessica E. Subject, Carol Van Natta, and Alexis Glynn Latner as they share stories and help out Hero-Dogs.org, a charity that supports our veterans!

10% of the first month’s profits go to Hero-Dogs.org http://www.hero-dogs.org/. Hero Dogs raises and trains service dogs and places them free of charge with US Veterans to improve quality of life and restore independence.

Buy Links:  

Amazon US   Amazon CA   Amazon UK   Amazon AU   Amazon FR   Amazon DE

Amazon JP   iBooks   B&N   Kobo   Google Play

TWO AGAINST THE STARS Exclusive Excerpt from New #SciFi Release

I thought I'd share another excerpt from my latest scifi romance release, Two Against the Stars.

Here's the story:

Empathic priestess Carialle has escaped the evil Amarotu Combine, but she’s hardly out of danger. Not when she risks everything to rescue a drugged man from a crooked veterans’ clinic. By lulling the clinic staff to sleep, she reveals her powers. And once again, criminals are after her and her rescuer.

Marcus Valerian, a wounded Special Forces veteran, never expected to have his life threatened by the clinic that’s supposed to help ex-soldiers like him. But when he wakes from a drugged state to find a lovely woman urging him to run–he does. In his family’s remote fishing cabin, he suffers the agony of withdrawal, soothed only by her powers.

In their idyllic hideaway, the two also discover a nova-hot attraction flaring. But can they stay alive long enough for it to become more? Not if the Combine has anything to say–they are not giving up until Marcus is dead and Carialle is their weapon.

The excerpt – empath Carialle uses her power to ingratiate herself to the landlady:

As her landlady gently quizzed her about what she needed and made suggestions, Carialle used her power to peer more deeply into the woman’s aura. The colors indicated Mrs. Galaganos liked to keep her fingers on everything going on in the neighborhood. She had a deep thirst for knowledge as a means of control of her environment. Living in a place like this, Carialle could see why the woman wanted to keep up with the business of everyone in her orbit. Knowledge was power in certain situations. She wondered if Mrs. Galaganos planned to pump her for gossip from the clinic. If she gets too nosy about me, I’ll have to be on the move.

“You certainly maintain the garden in great shape,” she said, trying to change the subject.

Pride evident on her face, Mrs. Galaganos surveyed her small domain. “Yes, all but the biggest tree. I’ll be devastated if anything happens to it but the leaves have been dropping for ten days now and this isn’t the leaf-casting season. I gave it extra water.”

Impatient as she was to be off about her own errands, Carialle felt a compulsion to react to the concern about the possibly ailing tree.  Tulavarrans and nature worked hand in hand on her planet and a priestess was never to ignore the needs of the differently-sentient. “Additional irrigation isn’t always the best tactic,” she said, walking toward the tree in question. “Let me take a look.”

Mrs Galaganos trailed behind her.  The pet yawned, rolled over in its patch of sun, and ignored them.

The tree had a beautiful shape, with a swirling trunk rising twenty feet in the air, and graceful branches currently sporting rather patchy clumps of leaves.  The older leaves were a glossy deep green but the newer ones were shriveled, mottled with red and brown. Carialle stepped across the ornamental barrier of white shells and rested her hand on the tree, reaching for the sentient with her power. A carving to the left caught her eye. “What’s this?”

“My late husband planted this tree when we moved in here, all those years ago.” Mrs. Galaganos sighed. “He was such a romantic—he carved our names into the trunk, with a heart, in honor of our love. Said it represented our promise to each other. This tree is my last link to him—he died a year ago. I’ll be devastated if it dies too. I feel close to him when I’m out here gardening in the shade of the tree.” Her voice quavered and Carialle feared the elderly lady was on the verge of tears.

She peered more closely at the inscription and could barely make out two names and several slashes resembling a date. The heart shape was distorted by the tree’s growth pattern.  “It’s lovely,” she said, repressing a shudder at the idea of defacing the living wood in this fashion. The carving was old and clearly not the cause of the tree’s current health problem.  “Bugs. Living deep within the trunk, feasting on the rising sap.”

“How—how can you tell?”

“I know a lot about plants. I’ve studied them.” Carialle improvised. The tree was attempting to tell her what course of action might help it fight off the infestation. She sent the entity a comforting thought and then used her power to push the insects.

Mrs. Galaganos screeched and retreated as a flood of tiny black and white insects came pouring from the ground between the tree’s gnarled roots, and out of every knothole. “I’ll get the watering robo and drown them!” She hobbled to take action, as the pet arrived to growl and make threatening noises at the invaders. His elderly mistress washed the horde off the sidewalk and into a drain, muttering imprecations against them and obviously taking great joy in defeating the hitherto unseen enemy. Carialle bit her lip hard to repress her urge to grin at the landlady’s enthusiasm.

She stepped away from the tree, hopping across the puddles and rivulets left behind on the sidewalk by Mrs. Galaganos’s flood.  “I believe if you sprinkle a spice which possesses a heavy concentration of capsaicin or a similar substance, around the roots once a week, work it into the ground with a trowel and then water, the tree will remain insect-free and should recover. Follow the procedure for four weeks.”

“It looks better already.”

Carialle pivoted on her heel to survey the tree. The leaves did seem healthier and the branches were less droopy.

“How—how did you do that?” Mrs. Galaganos was staring at her.

Hastily Carialle sent a thread of her power to calm the old woman, and to help her believe the lie she was about to utter. “I heard them moving and chirping under the bark and so I thumped hard on the tree. I guess I startled a bunch of them and the others followed, like larger creatures stampeding. You took care of the problem then.”

Mrs. Galaganos took a deep breath and patted the robo by her side. “I certainly did.”

With reluctance Carialle left an outsized feeling of gratitude for her efforts in her landlady’s mind. The woman made it her business to know everyone and everything in the district apparently and Carialle might need a favor or significant help at some point. Always good to have a kernel of obligation already planted. “I’ve got to be going now. I’m running out of time before I have to be at work so I must get my errands done.”

“See you later, dearie.”

She waved and left the courtyard, heading for the marketplace. She’d probably gone overboard with her assistance to the tree, but it was hard to tamp down her power once she was engaged in a task actually proper and in line with her beliefs. At the same time, leaving Mrs. Galaganos feeling so indebted to her made her feel queasy. Uncomfortably close to the type of coercion the Combine had forced her to do.

Buy Links:

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And don't miss the other two books in this series!

Here Be News

New Releases:

TWO AGAINST THE STARS by Veronica Scott
The story:

Empathic priestess Carialle has escaped the evil Amarotu Combine, but she's hardly out of danger. Not when she risks everything to rescue a drugged man from a crooked veterans' clinic. By lulling the clinic staff to sleep, she reveals her powers. And once again, criminals are after her and her rescuer.

Marcus Valerian, a wounded Special Forces veteran, never expected to have his life threatened by the clinic that's supposed to help ex-soldiers like him. But when he wakes from a drugged state to find a lovely woman urging him to run--he does. In his family's remote fishing cabin, he suffers the agony of withdrawal, soothed only by her powers.

In their idyllic hideaway, the two also discover a nova-hot attraction flaring. But can they stay alive long enough for it to become more? Not if the Combine has anything to say--they are not giving up until Marcus is dead and Carialle is their tool.

Buy Links: Amazon     iBooks     Barnes & Noble  Kobo

CHILDREN OF NIGHT series by PG Forte

The first six books in the series are being re-released through Entangled Publishing--with pretty new covers. These "deliciously dark" tales of undying love and vampire family values are currently on sale for .99 each.

Amazon |  Barnes & Noble  |  Kobo  

Other News:

Now Available as an Audio Book!

THE CHARM
Sweet Sci-Fi/Fantasy Romanceby Linda Mooney
Word Count: 60K
$3.99 e / $9.99 p / $19.95 a

Narrated by Barbara Nevins Taylor
Length: 6 hrs, 28 min
Hear a Sample.

She sold herself to a dark and angry master. 
He bought her, hoping she would save his world, and himself.

Tired of letting his people down time and time again, Egan Pri, costell of Unurit, has decided to do whatever it takes to save his people. A Charm is coming to town, and if he can scrape up enough money to buy her, his people could reap the benefits…but he's skeptical. Still, he'll try anything. The only rule? Keep her happy. He could do that.

Genesee ii Duuru, a magical gypsy of sorts, is ready to be sold. She feels the pull of a planet desperate for her help. The sadness, the hopelessness—it's time for her to do her part, what she was born to do. With two offers on the table, does she go with her heart, or the betterment of her tribe?

Genesee finds herself wanting to heal more than just the land and the people. But with this being her first sale, she fears she's gotten in over her head. What had started out as answering a call for help had morphed into her becoming a pawn in a political game she had no business being a part of.

Forgotten enemies, unexpected allies, and a love forbidden.

Warning! Contains puffy balls of light, drought, glass weaving, near starvation, budding knives, internal conflicts, revenge years in the making, and one woman's attempt to revive one man's cold and lifeless heart with her own warmth and love.

NOTE: This is a sweet romance, but you can get the love/consummation scene IN E-Format for free by clicking this link. This scene is NOT included in the print or audio edition

Bring It Back(list) Feature

X-TROLLER by Linda Mooney http://bit.ly/2hayNwB