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The Death Bringer (The Tharassas Cycle 04) by J. Scott Coatsworth #BlogTour #NewRelease #OtherWorldsInk #LGBTQ+ #ScienceFiction #Fantasy #Gay #YA

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Moonbeams over Atlanta welcomes back J. Scott Coatsworth to the blog with a stop on his blog tour for the new release of the fourth book in the The Tharassas Cycle series, The Death Bringer. Read on to discover this final installment.

BOOK BLURB

AIK WILL NEVER BE THE SAME… AND NEITHER WILL HIS WORLD

War is coming. Aik has become the Progenitor, and the Seed Mother has released him to transform the world for her alien brood. Silya and Raven, Aik’s former friends, are the only ones who can save him and the world. But what if the cure is worse than the invasion?

As Silya rushes to prepare Gullton for the battle to come, she’s determined to save as many people as she can. But new crises emerge that demand her attention.

Raven has his own hands full, keeping the dragon-like verent in line, while helping Silya to save the world. But what if the only way to do so is to sacrifice Aik, the man that he loves?

It’s the end of the world … or could it be the start of something new?

Series Blurb:

The Tharassas Cycle is a four book sci-fantasy series set on the recently colonized world of Tharassas. When humans first arrived on planet, they thought they were alone until the hencha mind made itself known. But now a new threat has arisen to challenge both humankind and their new allies on this alien world.

EXCERPT

Chapter One
Regroup

He floated, weightless and naked, surrounded by a reddish light and suspended in fluid. Something connected to his mouth and wrapped around his head, like a lover’s embrace.

He used to have a name. He searched his mind for some clue to his identity. I exist, so I must be someone. Or something.

That made sense, but got him no closer to an answer. He blinked. Who am I?

There was no immediate reply.

He lifted his hand. It was encased in metal. The gauntlet. That much he remembered, though it meant nothing to him. Except… it seemed different, somehow. Thinner.

He moved his arms in the liquid, and it sparkled around him where his shifting disturbed it. The metal extended down his wrist and along his forearm, like before, but now it went farther, around his elbow and up his bicep. He touched it with his free hand.

I can feel it. It was as if the metal had become a part of him, his nerves growing through it. He held out his metallic hand and flexed his fingers. What is it?

We call it uurcaa. It’s a sacred metal—it will protect you, and if your host dies, it will collect and save your soul. He could feel the emotions she held back from him. It is the last of its kind from our homeworld. Like us.

He blinked. Then what am I?

You are my son, Iihil. The progenitor, the one who has come before and the first of many more like you. The voice was deep and comforting.

Mother. Warmth infused him at her voice, and an eagerness to please her.

Still, something wasn’t right. He was more than that. He searched his mind, running up against that stubborn blankness. Somewhere beyond it were the answers he needed.

He’d been someone else. Before.

Who was I? Memories of a face—dark hair, intense eyes that nevertheless twinkled at him. Raven.

It came flooding back to him. His mother. His life in Gullton. Training to be a guard and meeting Raven for the first time. My name is Aik.

He reached for the mask that covered his face. It was suffocating. Something was stuck in his throat, and he coughed hard, trying to force it out, whipping around and causing the liquid around him to flash red in alarm.

Calm yourself. The voice was as thick and heavy as an ix hide, and just as soft and warm.

Aik pushed back. What are you doing to me? I don’t want this! Let me out! He thrashed about, trying to force his way through the suffocating liquid. The metal crept up his shoulder. If it covered all of him, he would be lost.

Calm yourself! It was more insistent this time.

Aik stiffened as an enforced lethargy settled over him. He lost control of his limbs, falling still in his floating prison. The voice pressed against his mind. You’re safe. Be calm, my little one.

He closed his eyes and thought of Raven, trying to stay fixed on that face. I can’t let myself forget again.

Then the world around him dissolved, and he was swept up in a torrent of memories that weren’t his own.

Buy Links:

Universal Buy Link

AUTHOR BIO

Scott lives with his husband Mark in a yellow bungalow in Sacramento. He was indoctrinated into fantasy and sci fi by his mother at the tender age of nine. He devoured her library, but as he grew up, he wondered where all the people like him were.

He decided that if there weren’t queer characters in his favorite genres, he would remake them to his own ends.

A Rainbow Award winning author, he runs Queer Sci Fi, QueeRomance Ink, Liminal Fiction, and Other Worlds Ink with Mark, sites that celebrate fiction reflecting queer reality, and was the committee chair for the Indie Authors Committee at the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America (SFWA) for almost three years..

Website | Facebook (Personal) | Facebook (Author Page) | Mastodon | Instagram | Goodreads | Liminal Fiction (LimFic.com) | QueeRomance Ink | Amazon

The Death Bringer (The Tharassas Cycle 04) by J. Scott Coatsworth #ShadowPost #NewRelease #OtherWorldsInk #LGBTQ+ #ScienceFiction #Fantasy #Gay #YA #GuestPost

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Moonbeams over Atlanta welcomes back J. Scott Coatsworth to the blog with the release day of the fourth and final installment of the The Tharassas Cycle series, The Death Bringer, today September 19th, 2024. Scott asked me to post a separate post on release day outside his “official” blog tour (stay tuned for my post for this), and I asked Scott to provide a unique guest post about what his inspiration for the books was for the series.

GUEST POST

The Inspiration

J. Scott Coatsworth

This week, I released The Death Bringer, the last book in my “four book trilogy.” It was supposed to be three, but book three was so long that I had to split it into two. It’s also my twelfth published novel.

Eloreen asked me to talk a bit about what inspired the book/series.

I have a dear friend – Jim Comer – who is a long-time sci-fi buff, and also one of the smartest guys I know. We got to talking one day about space travel. Jim contended – and current science backs him up on this – that faster-than-light travel will never be possible. I countered that we don’t know what discoveries are still in store, and that many things we once considered impossible are things we take for granted today.

But it got me thinking, and so I set about exploring the idea in a novella I titled The Last Run. The title refers to supply runs to the colony on Tharassas from Earth – via a “slow” ship that takes twenty-five years to reach its destination. Along the way, I discovered that my new world had semi-sentient plants and some kind of planetary mind. My readers loved it and encouraged me to write more on this strange planet.

So when it was time to choose my next project in late 2019, I decided to forge ahead with Tharassas. And so a series was born.

I hope you enjoy reading it as much as I liked writing it!

BOOK BLURB

AIK WILL NEVER BE THE SAME… AND NEITHER WILL HIS WORLD

War is coming. Aik has become the Progenitor, and the Seed Mother has released him to transform the world for her alien brood. Silya and Raven, Aik’s former friends, are the only ones who can save him and the world. But what if the cure is worse than the invasion?

As Silya rushes to prepare Gullton for the battle to come, she’s determined to save as many people as she can. But new crises emerge that demand her attention.

Raven has his own hands full, keeping the dragon-like verent in line, while helping Silya to save the world. But what if the only way to do so is to sacrifice Aik, the man that he loves?

It’s the end of the world … or could it be the start of something new?

Series Blurb:

The Tharassas Cycle is a four book sci-fantasy series set on the recently colonized world of Tharassas. When humans first arrived on planet, they thought they were alone until the hencha mind made itself known. But now a new threat has arisen to challenge both humankind and their new allies on this alien world.

Buy Links:

Universal Buy Link

AUTHOR BIO

Scott lives with his husband Mark in a yellow bungalow in Sacramento. He was indoctrinated into fantasy and sci fi by his mother at the tender age of nine. He devoured her library, but as he grew up, he wondered where all the people like him were.

He decided that if there weren’t queer characters in his favorite genres, he would remake them to his own ends.

A Rainbow Award winning author, he runs Queer Sci Fi, QueeRomance Ink, Liminal Fiction, and Other Worlds Ink with Mark, sites that celebrate fiction reflecting queer reality, and was the committee chair for the Indie Authors Committee at the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America (SFWA) for almost three years..

Website | Facebook (Personal) | Facebook (Author Page) | Mastodon | Instagram | Goodreads | Liminal Fiction (LimFic.com) | QueeRomance Ink | Amazon

Broken Mirror (Resonant Earth Volume 01) by Cody Sisco #BlogTour #NewRelease #OtherWorldsInk #LGBTQ+ #Paranormal #Romance #Giveaway #Queer

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Moonbeams over Atlanta welcomes Cody Sisco to the blog. Broken Mirror is the first book in the Resonant Earth series, and this second edition was released on August 16th, 2024. There is a Rafflecopter giveaway at the end of the post for Tortured Echoes, the sequel to Broken Mirror. Read on to discover more and good luck!

BOOK BLURB

A fractured mind or a global conspiracy? Uncovering the truth can be hell when nobody believes you… and you can’t even trust yourself.

Broken Mirror is the first volume in a queer psychological science fiction saga that looks at the stigma of mental illness and the hellish distrust and alienation that goes with it.

Victor Eastmore knows someone killed his grandfather, the pioneering scientist Jefferson Eastmore. But Victor, diagnosed with mirror resonance syndrome, has been shunned by Semiautonomous California society. Nobody will believe a Broken Mirror. Now Victor must tread the line between sanity and reclassification—a fate that all but guarantees he’ll lose his freedom.

With its self-driving cars, global firearms ban, and a cure for cancer, the science fiction world of Broken Mirror may sound like a near future utopia, but on Resonant Earth, history has taken a few wrong turns. The American Union is a weak and fractious alliance of nations in decline. Europe manipulates its citizens through propaganda. And Asia is reeling from decades of war.

Determined to uncover the truth about Jefferson’s murder, pansexual Victor and his trans friend Elena set out on a road trip that takes them across the American Union from Semiautonomous California through the Organized Western States to the Republic of Texas. But Elena is holding something back, and Victor’s condition worsens.

Amid shifting geopolitical sands, Broken Mirrors like Victor find themselves at a cyberpunk crossroads: evolve or go extinct.

Warnings: violence, discrimination against characters with mental health challenges

Buy Links:

Universal Buy Link | Goodreads Link

EXCERPT

Chapter One

A new universe, its vibrations, called to me, and I answered, ignorant of the harm in crossing over.

—Victor Eastmore, Apology to Resonant Earth, (transmission date unknown)

Semiautonomous California

29 February 1991

It’s one thing to die quietly with things left unsaid among family members. It’s another thing to do what the great Jefferson Eastmore did with his secrecy and architecture of conspiracy: keep essential truths from Victor and put him on a collision course with an uncanny future.

Victor gazed across City Lake toward the tessellated foothills, where the elite families of Oakland and Bayshore kept their hedges trimmed and thorny. His grandfather’s sarcophagus was up there, surrounded by marble pillars and gold-gilt fencing shaped like twisted strands of DNA. A tidy and neat brick gravemound would never have sufficed, since at the end of his life, Jefferson was as grandiose as his cancer-curing career. The stones were plucked from the canals of New Venice, and a plaque listed the man’s many accomplishments. Not listed was his failed effort to cure Victor of mirror resonance syndrome.

Victor spun around to face the city skyline. The morning was bright and windy. The timefeed on his MeshBit indicated thirty minutes until his reclassification appointment. He could go and wait in the anteroom, but his anxious vibrations might shake the building to its foundations.

He took a breath. No going back. Before the sun reached its zenith that day, his path would materialize. If he were lucky, he could stay a Class Three: free but under close supervision. Or he could become a Class Two: under guard, imprisoned, at a rancho in the hinterlands. He whispered a cherished but inconsistently effective mantra to fight off brain blankness: The wise owl listens before asking who. Each episode of blanking out was one more step toward mirror resonance syndrome’s inevitable tragic end: becoming a comatose Class One, insensate, a forgotten ward of the government. The only unknown factor was how quickly the future would crash against him.

He trudged along the shoreline, tensing and relaxing his jaw, trying to distract himself. Glittering towers rose exultantly cityside. Squally breezes swooped out of a cloudless, azure sky and assaulted bulrushes, sedges, and cattails in the shallows where a grid of waterplots penned them in.

Granfa Jefferson had been poisoned. Victor knew it. He had proof. But his family didn’t believe him, and if he said any more about it, he would be locked away. Fair? No. Surprising? Not really. After all, his life was a farcical succession of tragedies. It wasn’t time to give up, though. Not while he had unanswered questions.

The palm trees encircling the lake rustled like cheerleaders shaking their pom-poms. The water rippled, creating countless sun flashes on the lake’s surface, and afterimages glowed and pulsed when he closed his eyes. The stench of goose shit turned his stomach.

He wedged the MeshBit’s detachable sonobulb in his ear, then called Elena. She answered right away. This was not the first time her promptness was suspicious.

“See?” she said. “When a friend calls, you should answer. Right away. Not never.”

“I know. I need your help,” he said. “My appointment is here. I’m having trouble.”

“Where are you?” she asked.

“City Lake. West shore.”

“I can’t get there in time.”

You were there for Granfa Jeff’s funeral. You showed up at my apartment whenever you wanted. Why can’t you be here now?

“Then talk to me,” Victor said. “Anything to keep my mind off my theories about Granfa Jeff.”

At the time, Victor had nothing close to the truth about Jefferson’s secret messages and plans for conspiracy and counter-conspiracy. He couldn’t have guessed his role in the proliferating conflagration that would transform every person on Resonant Earth and beyond. No one could have predicted the neuro-contagion that eventually radiated beyond the American Union of Nations, or the mind-machine hybridization that became humanity’s destiny, or the fact that crossing over to another world would become a possibility rather than paranoia. If Victor had guessed any of it, he might have failed his reclassification deliberately and shown up at the gates of a rancho to check himself in. All this was a lot to have piled onto a mentally unstable young adult.

“But you found radiation on the data egg,” Elena said. “I believe you. We’re going to figure this out.”

Universal Buy Link | Goodreads Link

Giveaway:

Cody is giving away an ebook copy of Tortured Echoes, the sequel to Broken Mirror:

a Rafflecopter giveaway

Direct Link if unable to see the above embedded Rafflecopter: http://www.rafflecopter.com/rafl/display/b60e8d47317/

AUTHOR BIO

Cody Sisco is an author, editor, publisher, and literary community organizer. His LGBT psychological science fiction series includes two novels thus far, Broken Mirror and Tortured Echoes. He is a freelance editor specializing in genre-bending fiction and the acquisitions editor for RIZE Press. In 2017, he co-founded Made in L.A. Writers, an indie author co-op dedicated to the support and appreciation of independent authors. His startup, BookSwell, is a literary events and media production company dedicated to lifting up marginalized voices and connecting readers and writers in Southern California and beyond. He serves as a co-executive on the Board of Governors for the Editorial Freelancers Association, as the treasurer for the LGBTQ+ Editors Association, and as a board member at APLA Health.

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