It's my pleasure to welcome back Veronica Scott. Playing Fan Girl here, I love her books. They are always a one-click for me. And I've been hooked on the anthologies created by Veronica and Pauline Baird Jones. Such fun stories. Here's Veronica to tell us about the 4th anthology.
About four
years ago, my author friend Pauline B. Jones and I started a fun project we
call Pets In Space® and invited some other science fiction romance authors to
join in. We put together an annual collection of all new stories featuring
action, adventure, romance and a pet of some sort involved in the story. Sort
of like “Lassie in space”. (Not the racier kind of ‘pets’ you find in some
steamy fiction!).
The idea
was to find new readers for scifi romance and to support a worthy cause with a
portion of the royalties. Now in our fourth year, we’ve hit the USA Today Best
Seller list three times and been able to give our charity over $7K total for the
first three years, thanks to our wonderful readers.
Pets in Space® 4
Anthology Blurb:
For a limited time only! Pets in
Space® 4 is proud to present 13 amazing, original new stories! Join the
adventures as today’s leading Science Fiction Romance authors take you on a
journey to another world. Pets in Space® proudly supports Hero-Dogs.org,
a non-profit charity that provides service animals to veterans and first
responders in need. Join New York Times, USA TODAY and Award-winning
Bestselling authors S.E. Smith, Anna Hackett, Tiffany Roberts, Veronica Scott,
Pauline Baird Jones, Laurie A. Green, Donna McDonald, Regine Abel, Alexis Glynn
Latner, JC Hay, E.D. Walker, Kyndra Hatch, and Cassandra Chandler for another
exciting Pets in Space® anthology. Get the stories before they are gone!
I
always set my Pets In Space® stories on an interstellar cruise liner and have
had all kinds of pets from a cat to an eagle to an alien blend of a tribble and
a red-tailed panda. This year my pet is an alien ‘dog’, named Charrli. I’m not
much of a dog person (it’s always been cats for me, since I was a kid) but I
kept seeing Charrli in my mind’s eye and just had to write him into the action!
My ship has a resident cat, Moby, but she disappeared for the entire novel – I
think she wasn’t happy I brought a dog on board LOL.
Here’s
the blurb for my full length novel in the anthology:
STAR
CRUISE: IDOL’S CURSE (The Sectors SF Romance Series)
An
unusual bequest….
Juli
Shaeffer, the Nebula Zephyr’s cruise director, receives a mysterious bequest
from the estate of a longtime passenger – a lump of rock taken from a reef on
the planet Tahumaroa. Legend states anyone who steals from the ocean gods will
be cursed. The passenger’s will requests the rock be returned to the beach so
his heirs won’t be affected by the bad luck he believed he’d incurred. Juli
doesn’t believe in superstitions and she agrees to carry out this small favor
on the ship’s next stop at the planet in question.
Until
the rock disappears from her office…
When
the rock disappears and reappears in various locations around the ship, and
seems connected to a steadily escalating series of mishaps, Juli turns to Third
Officer Steve Aureli as the only one she feels she can trust. Along with Steve
and his elderly Aunt Dian – a passenger aboard the Nebula Zephyr for this
cruise - she investigates the strange series of malfunctions plaguing the
interstellar luxury liner. Steve and Juli enlist his Aunt Dian’s dog, Charrli,
a retired Sectors Z Corps canine, to help them track the missing rock as it
moves about the ship.
Juli
and Steve must find the rock, hang onto it and transport it to the planet’s
surface, before the alien idol’s curse turns deadly. The attraction between the
two of them grows as the threat to Juli becomes more and more focused. Can she
carry out her task while he keeps her safe from the alien curse? Will the
capricious alien idol bring them good fortune…or disaster?
Here’s a quick excerpt as Juli and
the rest of the ship’s crew begin to realize the trouble they might be in:
Maeve, the ship’s governing
Artificial Intelligence, spoke next. “I am unable to identify any anomaly in my
systems. There was no command given or received to alter the air pressure flow
on Level Five, other than the time boxed kite event, which occurred early in
the day and ended as scheduled. I’m currently devoting extra ganglions to
controlling all systems in the ship which affect life support. I’m also running
specialized analysis, drilling into the available data for any clue or
predictor of the problem.”
Captain
Fleming nodded, rotating his chair to face Juli. “Anything to add?”
She
swallowed hard. “Yes, sir, I believe I do.” Steve flashed her an encouraging
smile, raising his eyebrows. The captain
is either going to believe my wild tale or write my career off for being space
happy. “Sir, do you remember the special assignment I took on? Retrieving a
rock that a now deceased passenger had taken from Tahumaroa Two and returning
it to the planet on his behalf? I found the rock in the sand on Level Five
right before the winds started blowing.”
The
chief of Security made a quickly suppressed sound of surprise. The Executive
Officer was staring at her with his mouth open. Fleming raised his eyebrows but
was stoic. “Did anyone else see the rock? Maeve?”
“I
had a ganglion in the general area but the picture was fuzzy.” The AI projected
a miniature trideo on the burnished conference table and Juli saw herself and
Charli on the beach, but the quality was grainy and broke up into fragments.
There was no sign of the rock and from all appearances she and the dog were
playing.
“My
aunt said Charrli agreed the rock was there,” Steve said. “They’re a former Z
Corps team. The dog has unusual capabilities and an enhanced IQ and has been
used in the past for gathering intel. If he told Dian he observed the rock,
there’s no doubt. A causal link to the malfunction has yet to be established of
course. ”
“Do
you have a theory, Juli?” the captain asked.
“I
can’t even begin to guess, sir, unless the rock contains an unknown type of
alien sentience and has the ability to teleport, and to affect systems in its
vicinity.” She blushed as she heard how ridiculous she sounded. Like I’m reciting the plot of a bad trideo
action movie. “My groundcar did break down shortly after I took the rock
from the lawyer’s office but I realize that’s not conclusive.” And the diva lost her voice right when I was
going to stick the rock in my safe. She remembered how ill at ease Cilla
the lawyer had been the whole time Juli had been in the office, as well as the
several odd instances of minor damage in the vicinity.
“I’ve
seen countless unbelievable things in my years traveling through the Sectors
and outside the fence on missions,” Fleming said after a moment’s silence.
“Where is the rock now?”
“It’s supposed to be in my office,”
she said.
Author Bio and Links:
USA
Today Best Selling Author
Veronica Scott grew up in a house with a
library as its heart. Dad loved science fiction, Mom loved ancient history and
Veronica thought there needed to be more romance in everything. When she ran
out of books to read, she started writing her own stories.
Seven
time winner of the SFR Galaxy Award, as well as a National Excellence in
Romance Fiction Award, Veronica is also the proud recipient of a NASA
Exceptional Service Medal relating to her former day job, not her romances!
She read the part of Star Trek Crew Member in
the official audiobook production of Harlan Ellison’s “The City On the Edge of
Forever.”
