Cover Reveal: Team Alpha

Team Alpha (Planet Seekers book 1), by Tonya CannariatoExciting news this week: I have a new cover to reveal. Kelley York once again provided something SHINY for me to chase. And Liana is helping me with a pre-write consult to make sure I don’t jump directly into a plot hole.

😀

The premise for this one: WWIII happened in 2020. By 2120, humans are finally figuring out a way to get off-planet to escape the nuclear destruction, led by India and China, who were spectators to the world war. Taoruti 3 might be the savior for the remnants of the Earth’s population. It’s up to a select team to clear the new planet for terraforming and colonization, but nobody has ever done this before—and the team carries within it the toxic politics that led to WWIII a hundred years previously.

Mostly… I’m hoping I’m not predicting something dire for the next few years.

Today, Gayla sent me the rough outline of another Katarr story, too, so I have more than one story percolating–even though I swore I wouldn’t do that to myself again.

Actually, in the process of cleaning up my bookmarks this week, I rediscovered the online service where I had kept story ideas in the past. There are quite a few stories in there that have not-insignificant beginnings to them. I’m getting to the point of most authors I know: More ideas than I know what to do with, or time to write them all down.

Which is an interesting irony given the ongoing saga of #cockygate. And even more interesting given one of my new favorite reads author, C.E. Murphy. I stumbled across her Walker Papers series in my library’s eBook listings and spent a couple days reading the first couple in it. It struck me forcibly that here’s another half-Native female mechanic protagonist, which, on the surface description makes you think the author’s totally going to rip off Patricia Briggs’ Mercy Thompson work, but the characters are so unique it doesn’t even matter that they’re both realized in a PNR/UF genre. It made me unreasonably happy that both versions exist, and as far as I can tell, there’s no animus between the two authors for having had similar ideas at similar times. Strangely to me, Murphy’s story was actually published first, even.

In any case, I’m glad to see authors out there who are, truly, just focused on producing their next book.

The interesting reflection on that was an article I ran across urging readers to quiet their egos. In some ways, that also tied to the old articles I re-read recently, one on how to do emotional labor, and the other on practical steps men can take to support feminism. The article I can claim for research for my new novel, though, talks about “eyeball planets” and what it would mean practically to try to live on a tidally locked planet.

On the promotion side of my author work, I have sent my Red Slaves books out on an Itsy Bitsy Book Bits book spotlight tour for the next two months as well as reduced the price for book 1 through the end of this month. I’ve definitely noticed that having more books out means an increase in income and sales overall, though I’m still incredibly small potatoes (only three of my titles have sold more than 100 copies), but it’s motivating me to keep going. And to invest a little in some of the promotional stuff I’d always previously eschewed.

And I’m in talks with a company about the possibility of selling them some of the rights to some of my stories. Once the final agreements have been inked, you can be sure I’ll let you know the relevant details. {{smile}}

Apart from all that, I’ve been diligently applying for jobs, and hubs and I have been walking the doggies enough that my phone says I averaged 3,941 steps a day last week. And 7 hours and 44 minutes of sleep per night. With all the binge reading my new library card has afforded me, I’m already 85% done with my Goodreads reading challenge for the year, but that also means I haven’t kept the date night with hubs. Given he’s wrapped up in the Capitals’ unlikely run at the Stanley Cup, I guess that’s maybe also my own self-defense.

😀

Meantime, Round 2 for this year is about two-thirds done. I’ve actually done pretty well with my goals this time around, but I’d like to see if I can get more into the writing groove this week. While I work on that, I encourage you to see how the other ROW80ers are doing.

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