Showing posts with label JC Hay. Show all posts

Saturday, January 27, 2018

Flare, Team Corona, JC Hay

Liza warns: this blog will make you hungry!

Guilt-less Pleasures

It’s National Chocolate Cake Day, at least according to a few sources, and I’ve gotta ask – what’s more romantic than Chocolate Cake? Nothing, obviously. If there’s a treat that deserves its own day my vote would certainly be for chocolate cake. Or any cake, really. I’m not picky. And I’m not shy about my love for food, especially desserts.

But I do sometimes get shy about my love of Romance. And that’s a problem.

I get it – we’re conditioned to think less of romance as a genre. At best it’s a guilty pleasure. Chocolate cake that we should feel bad about enjoying. Fluff and diversion without any real significance, or an important message. Something that’s okay once and a while, when we’re not reading more important things.

And that’s BS.

Pleasure is pleasure. It shouldn’t be defined or quantified, because it certainly never feels like there’s enough to go around. Love is literally the most important thing in the world. Romance is hope. It’s the promise that people can find happiness; that there’s a happily ever after for every person, regardless of how damaged they believe themselves to be. Regardless of who they love. And it’s the promise that love can redeem, heal, and make whole.

I literally can’t think of anything more important - more significant - than that.

Love isn’t a guilty pleasure. It’s not fluff, and not a diversion. And I’m tired of bowing to the feeling like I should treat it like one.

Kayana, the heroine in Flare, struggles with guilt too – but she’s also seldom shy about what she wants, or how to go about getting it. After having lost everything, she’s started fighting her way back, and in the following excerpt, she’s allowing herself a little pleasure of her own…no guilt allowed

Excerpt

Kayana didn’t understand humans. That had to be it. One moment, Ax had been grieving and burying his dead friend. The next, the man had been checking out her ass as she walked off to the bridge. She hadn’t been offended by the attention—he was hardly the first human to do so, and she’d have spaced half of the crew if she’d murdered every man who’d given her the eye. It was the incongruity of the timing that threw her off. None of which stopped her from taking up position in her cabin’s doorway when she heard the shower cut out. Sauce for the Ct’hau was, after all, sauce for Ct’hara.

It was a grotesque luxury to have an actual, water-based shower on a ship of this size. Then again, “grotesque luxury” seemed to be the singular design ethic. At least they kept themselves in check by limiting themselves to one shared facility for the two crew members. No telling if the holocam crew had their own. Berniss had been so perfectly composed every time they’d met that Kayana half-expected the woman was secretly a robot.

A few minutes after the shower shut off, Ax padded down the hall toward his cabin, which was conveniently across the narrow hall from her own. Kayana leaned against the wall next to his door and watched him approach. He had a fluffy white towel wrapped around his waist and artfully knotted, and he left wet footprints on the expensive hardwood.

Kayana made a show of giving him a slow once-over. As humans went, she supposed he wasn’t altogether hideous—he didn’t show signs of the near-psychotic body worship that plagued most Malebranki men. It made him look less sculpted and more naturally fit. Instead of a chiseled six-pack, the soft shadow of abs showed across his stomach. His shoulders were nice and broad, though, and the way his torso narrowed at the waist drew her eye naturally down.

The same brown stubble that seemed to permanently grace his cheeks formed a dusting of hair on his belly and ducked below the towel in a teasing suggestion that made her imagination flare for a moment.

Only a moment though. He was a necessary trouble she had to put up with to reach her goal of getting back into her family’s good graces. An easy route to enough money to prove she could contribute and belonged as a part of the House. He wasn’t the worst eyesore she’d endured as means to that end, but he was temporary nonetheless.

He narrowed his eyes as he noticed her and stopped in the middle of the hall, just before his door. She held back her smirk as he tensed his abs to improve their definition—as though she wouldn’t notice. “Find what you were looking for?”

Kayana rolled her eyes. “Hard to tell with the towel in the way, but I suspect not.” She smiled, showing off the points of her teeth. It should terrify him—among her people, smiling was more of a challenge than a gesture of reassurance. She prided herself on her smile.

He deflated slightly at the dismissal, but she watched him pick his ego back up before he walked into his cabin.

Flare: Team Corona

They could go all the way, if they don’t go straight to hell.

All Kayana wants is respect. Jilted by her fiancée, turned out by her family, and rejected by her crew – esteem is in short supply. When she hears about the cash prize for winning the Great Space Race, she realizes it's more than enough money to get her old life back. Or buy herself an asteroid someplace where she won't care what people think.

Ax Turner just needs to hide, and the Race gives him the best opportunity to do so. In plain sight. Surely the thugs and criminals he's ripped off won't come after him while cameras are rolling on the galaxy's most popular reality game show. And if they do, well, having a partner who's able to fight and looks like a devil seems like a win.

They're on the run - from the past, from the lethal challenges of the Great Race, from their feelings, and straight into each other. They've got more than their share of problems, and those secrets could drive them apart, or be the key to winning the biggest prize of all: each other.

Buy Link: https://www.books2read.com/u/mZ50J2

Want to learn about the other Great Space Race Books? Go to http://gspacerace.com to read about the other books and download a free preview of the series!

About JC Hay

JC Hay writes romantic science fiction and space opera, because the coolest gadgets in the world are useless without someone to share them.

In addition to Romance Writers of America, he is also a proud member of the SFR Brigade (for Science Fiction Romance), the Fantasy, Futuristic, and Paranormal Romance chapter, and a proud member of RWA’s PAN (the published authors network).

In addition to piracy in high space, JC writes the Corporate Services series, a set of connected cyberpunk romances set eighty years in our future where the limits of humanity are being stretched and tested.

Website: http://jchay.com

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Wednesday, November 22, 2017

JC Hay & 5 others writes collaborate to create The Great Space Race

Start Your Jump Drives!

Yesterday saw the culmination of almost a year-long effort between myself and five other writers, all luminaries of science-fiction romance. I’ve got to say - Collaboration is a crazy drug.

We started the series with a singular vision – what if you took a movie like 1965’s The Great Race, or a TV show like The Amazing Race, and gave it that wonderful SFR twist? And what if we made it more like a reality TV show? That was the birth of The Great Space Race.

Each of us sat down to plot our own teams, charted out our planets and went to work figuring out where we could cross over with each other to make the race feel “lived-in.” It was every bit as wonderful as it sounds. Writing is such a solitary profession for much of the time, so it was incredible to sit around the virtual table with people whose work I already knew and enjoyed, and just brainstorm together.

Even better was the way our ideas fed each other – we enjoyed a sort of easy harmony where each idea caused a cascade of similar ones, like scree in a landslide.

For my part, it culminated in Flare, the story of Team Corona. The back grew out of an early comment by series originator CJ Cade – that pirates and brigands were likely to attack the well-known raceways. I immediately wondered what would happen if one of those pirates got roped into competing in the race. Since we were writing space opera, I cast the pirate-heroine as from a race of aliens I’d been working on in some side stories (my strangely honor-bound, devilish looking Malebranki), and paired her with her polar opposite – a shiftless, cowardly grifter named Ax.

As I’d hoped, it created a lot of tension between them, but it also gave them plenty of room to grow towards and with each other. That’s something they’ll need, since Octiron – the company that sponsors the race – isn’t in the business of giving away shares of the prize money. So they’ll stop at nothing to make sure as few contestants finish as possible!

They could go all the way, if they don’t go straight to hell.

All Kayana wants is respect. Jilted by her fiancée, turned out by her family, and rejected by her crew – esteem is in short supply. When she hears about the cash prize for winning the Great Space Race, she realizes it’s more than enough money to get her old life back. Or buy herself an asteroid someplace where she won’t care what people think.

Ax Turner just needs to hide, and the Race gives him the best opportunity to do so. In plain sight. Surely the thugs and criminals he’s ripped off won’t come after him while cameras are rolling on the galaxy’s most popular reality game show. And if they do, well, having a partner who’s able to fight and looks like a devil seems like a win.

They’re on the run – from the past, from the lethal challenges of the Great Race, from their feelings, and straight into each other. They’ve got more than their share of problems, and those secrets could drive them apart, or be the key to winning the biggest prize of all: each other.

Buy Link: https://www.books2read.com/u/mZ50J2

Want to learn about the other Great Space Race Books? Go to http://gspacerace.com to read about the other books and download a free preview of the series!

Excerpt from Flare: Team Corona

The woman with the scarlet skin stepped the rest of the way through the door and pointed the pepper-box muzzle of the pistol at him. As she spoke, the universal translator in Ax’s comm unit immediately converted her speech to Galactic Common. “I am Kayana, Daughter of House Frissyn, Banner-bearer for House Garryk of the Nine. Surrender or die.”

Ax appreciated the easy choices. He slowly put his hands up, careful not to set himself tumbling through zero-g. “I’ll take surrender, thanks.”

The pistol didn’t waver as she reached out to snag his ankle with her free hand. She dragged him to the deck and pinned him in place with one magnetic boot. “Where is the rest of the crew?”

“You’re looking at it, devil-girl. The only other guy is dead upstairs.” Technically true, since the camera crew wasn’t going to help run the ship.

The woman snorted and lifted him to her face. Up close, and without the flames to distract him, Ax could get a good look at the pirate for the first time. Her eyes were black, the white so small as to be nonexistent. Wavy dark hair tumbled over her shoulders and into her face in a cloud that bordered on unruly. In the dim light, he could just make out the edges of the tiny scales that chased the high bones of her cheeks and the point of her chin. In another situation, he’d consider her damned attractive. So long as she wasn’t threatening him. And she didn’t smile. Smiling showed off the sharp points on her canine teeth and made her a lot scarier.

She leaned into his face, giving him a full view of her vicious dentition. “Turn on the gravity.”

Fortunately, he was used to terrifying women. He shrugged. “I’d love to help you with that, but no can do, Kay.”

“Kayana,” she spat. “And you will do it, or I’ll kill you.”

“You’re big on that threat. Problem is, the ship’s all biometric controls. Once you kill me, you’ll be locked out of the system completely. I’m the only the person you’ve got.” He gave her his most charming smile, the one Gobby had buckled for.

It didn’t work.

“All I need is your hand.” She reached for a blade at her hip. “You don’t need to be attached.”

“Actually, I do. It’s a pretty sophisticated system they’ve got in place, and a dead hand is no better than the wrong hand. But you’ve got bigger problems than the security.” He took a deep breath, hoping he had put enough bait on the hook to keep her from killing him. Or cutting off his hands. He was especially attached to his hands.

She rolled her eyes. “Such as?”

“Well, the AI is a complete pain in the ass, for starters.” Ax chuckled at the understatement.

Kayana knotted her fingers in his collar and began to drag him up the steps to the main deck. “An AI is just one of the ship’s systems. It does what it’s told.”

“Yeah, and this one’s been told to be completely unmanageable.” He scrambled his feet before realizing it was easier to let her drag him in micro-gravity than to fight against it. “I assume it’s be-cause Octiron gets some kind of sick thrill out of making everything as difficult as possible.”

She tugged him back up to eye level, and Ax found himself staring into eyes like the black emptiness between the stars, and just as warm. “Or you could be stalling, looking for an excuse while you try to figure out a way to render me unconscious.”

Ax donned his best grin. “I’m a lover, not a fighter.”

Her nostrils flared, and she snorted. “Said every man who was lousy at both.”

About JC Hay

JC Hay writes romantic science fiction and space opera, because the coolest gadgets in the world are useless without someone to share them.

Website: http://jchay.com

Newsletter Sign-Up: http://jchay.com/mailing-list-sign-up/

Follow my Bookbub Author Page: https://www.bookbub.com/profile/jc-hay

Like my Facebook Author Page: https://www.facebook.com/AuthorJCHay/

Follow me on Twitter: @j_c_hay: https://twitter.com/j_c_hay

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Friday, July 7, 2017

JC Hay Discusses CyberPunk & shares Dubai Double Cross

Lifting the shadows on cyberpunk

Hi everyone, you may remember when I was here a couple of months ago talking about Firefly, Space Opera, and how it influenced my story Hearts and Minds. This time around, I want to talk about my other great science fiction love, and why Cyberpunk Romance is totally a thing.

Cyberpunk first showed up in the 80s as a perfectly timed amalgamation of futurism, the budding hacker mentality, and trans-humanism. The ideas of making a better body and the merging of mind and machine were matched against a future that only the excesses of the “Greed is Good” 80s could envision. Giant multinational corporations had eclipsed local governments, and fought their own wars with their private armies. Glittering chrome and bright neon defined the city streets, all shot through the rainsoaked, shadowed lens of the postwar noir aesthetic.

Stories like Neuromancer, Mona Lisa Overdrive, and Mirrorshades served as my gateway drug, and hooked me on this dangerous new future that felt so much closer than glittering spaceships and FTL travel. George Alec Effinger’s When Gravity Fails transported me to new places my quiet suburban life hadn’t before imagined. And films like Blade Runner firmly cemented the images of cyberpunk in my brain.

All of these things were part and parcel of what I wanted to recapture when I decided to create my first series setting. I updated some of the ideas, to match changing technology, and introduced a singular shadowy enemy – Corporate Services. The clearing house organization that hired and employed mercenaries to keep the the corporation’s hands clean. Most importantly, I wanted the heroes and heroines of my stories to reflect my love of cyberpunk’s "high-tech lowlifes" and my firm belief that everyone, no matter how broken they feel, deserves a happy ending.

It was also through the characters that I leaned hard into the genre’s "punk" aesthetic – these were not tales of dashing, billionaire playboys, except tangentially. I needed characters barely getting by in the cracks of a society that was at best indifferent to them. Mercenaries, thieves, boxers, and prostitutes. People who had little power other than what they could grab for themselves.

Despite having bionic arms and cybernetic eyes, despite being hackers and bodyguards, I wanted characters that didn’t just deserve a happily ever after; they earned it. Each of them carries their wounds – some more visibly than others. There’s no cybernetic upgrade to fix what’s wrong; only their willingness to give and receive love can heal them.

For a limited time, the first book in the series is on sale for $0.99 – but I’m also giving away a copy to one lucky person who posts in the comments section below. Stop in and talk about your favorite cyberpunk stories, or what cybernetic enhancements you might want for yourself. I’ll look forward to seeing your replies!

Back Cover:

Elise is looking for an exit. Too many years as a top-talent thief in the digital shadows have whittled away her patience and her humanity. She’s not looking for complications, but with one more job, she’ll finally have enough money to leave the life for good.

Na’im does what he must to survive. Whether it’s selling his body to the corporate glitterati, or going on the run when things get bad – but even a survivor can be caught off guard, and his boss’s murder has left him with no one to trust but a thief with her own agenda.

Together, they’re on the run trying to figure out who framed them both and stay one step ahead of the murderer who’s close behind. Trust is a rare commodity for accidental lovers, but in a dark future where everything can be upgraded and emotions can be programmed, sometimes all that can keep you human is your heart.

Buy Link:

http://books2read.com/u/m2XRxk

Excerpt from Dubai Double-Cross:

Elise sighed. So much for this being a milk run. Just once I want to have a mission go one-hundred percent according to plan. She started to holster her pistol when a movement from the bathroom caught her attention. She rolled behind the bed and brought the weapon up, the green dot highlighting the center of a well-sculpted, hairless chest.

Damn, money and taste run hand in hand. Elise peeled her eyes away from the man’s gorgeous frame. He had the perfect complexion that came with wealth, but his well-defined abs and power-laden chest were natural. Nothing vat-grown about his physique at all, Elise noted with appreciation. Not that I have time to care about such things right now.

She zeroed the pistol on his head as she stood. “Step away from the bed. Who are you?”

Fear, grief and rage chased each other across the man’s face. “What did she ever do to you?”

Elise wiggled her pistol to call his attention to it. “Gun. I ask the questions. Let’s try again. Who are you?”

“Na’im. I’m Jalil—Miss Zaahir’s personal assistant.”

The euphemism made sense in pseudo-conservative Dubai, where the appearance of propriety needed to be maintained in spite of what happened behind closed doors. Still, she couldn’t resist wondering what enhancements he had beneath the surface—stamina, heightened sensitivity, almost certainly a skillset for a wide array of bedroom activities. It depended on how Zaahir’s tastes in the bedroom ran. She glanced at his temple and made out the port covers for an extensive cortical unit. “Na’im, step away from the bed.” When he complied, she continued. “Miss Zaahir was dead when I entered the room. With you being in the bathroom at the same time, you can understand why I am disinclined to trust you. So you stay still, and we’ll have a little talk.”

Despite herself, Elise let her vision dip to take in the full show. Na’im didn’t so much as blink at the examination, leaning against the wall next to the bathroom door. He pointed at his hips. “May I at least grab a towel?”

About JC Hay

JC Hay writes romantic science fiction and space opera, because the coolest gadgets in the world are useless without someone to share them.

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Friday, March 24, 2017

Hearts and Minds by JC Hay

Piracy, Psychics, and Swords, Oh My!

Like a lot of SFR writers, Firefly holds a special place in my heart – despite its flaws (and they are many), the characters, and the makeshift family they created for themselves draw me back in repeatedly. When I wrote my first space opera romance, Hearts and Minds, I wanted to capture some of that same feeling. Most of all, I wanted to create the sense of payday-to-payday desperation that followed Captain Tightpants in my favorite episodes; a sense that the ship is held together as much by the captain’s willpower as anything so mundane as welds and joins.

Syna Davout’s ship – The Hangman’s Quarry – was designed to follow in the footsteps of the renegade vessels before it, especially Serenity and Moya (from Farscape). Someplace that was more home than ship, and carried the imprints of its crew (both past and current) in the design. From the snap-locks that hold everything in place (to protect them from Syna’s evasive piloting) to the gym built into the first cargo bay (a remnant from Syna’s old partner, Anbjorn), to the ship’s gossipy AI, I wanted to convey that sense of lived-in, broken comfort.

I contrasted it early on with the sleek, impersonal cleanliness of Galen’s Narcissus-class corvette. Decorated in white tiles polished metal, it’s a far cry from the cramped, dingy chaos of the Quarry, and Syna disparages it almost immediately. Unfortunately for her, there’s more to her act of piracy than she’s aware, and if there’s one thing she hates more than sterile silver spaceships, it’s being someone else’s pawn—

Hearts and Minds

Syna Davout was hired for a simple smash-and-grab job—smash into a luxury yacht, grab the cash, and split the proceeds with her client. Unfortunately, the client failed to mention that she’d be the diversion for an assassination attempt that destroys the yacht and leaves her with a passenger she neither wanted nor expected - a fugitive telepath caught in the middle of a revolution.

Galen Fash knew his days were numbered. The fledgling uprising on his home world needs him to buy them time, with his life if necessary. The last thing he wanted is to get involved with a pirate captain-for-hire whose larger-than-life emotions draw him like a moth to a flame.

On the run from a relentless enemy that wants them both dead will be hard enough without acknowledging the attraction that flares between them. Together they might have a chance, assuming they can survive each other…

Available Exclusively on Amazon:

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B06XHS2KZ8

Excerpt

“Are you going to help or just stare down my shirt?”

Galen blinked, smiled. “Is there a way I can do both?”

She shoved a curl of hair out of her face, pink leaching into her cheeks. “Just hold this.” She indicated the wires in her hands with a jut of her chin. He had to shift closer to reach and found himself too conscious of the way she pressed back against him as she worked. He willed his body not to respond and hoped it wasn’t too distracted to ignore him. She mumbled something as she flattened her back against him.

“Sorry, what?”

“Close your eyes,” she whispered. His pulse lurched erratically until blue-white plasma illuminated the space, and he realized she’d issued it not as a come-on, but a warning. His eyes snapped shut and focused on the red-yellow afterimage of the welding lance drifting quietly behind his eyelids. “Two more, then I think we’ve bypassed it.”

“That’ll bring the shields up to full?”

“It’ll bring them back to where they were before we started this venture, which is something. Stay out of the aft-most cargo hold—I had to reroute power from its environmental controls.”

“Is that safe?”

The welder sparked again, the light savage even through his closed eyes. The smell of ozone and charged particles drifted through the air. Combined with her shampoo, it made her smell like a spice field after an electrical storm.

“Yeah, just don’t go in there. Not much choice in the matter, the starboard field’s influx coupler got slagged. I don’t just carry those around with me.” The welder flared again. “That should finish that.”

Galen opened his eyes cautiously. “You can’t ask Bree?”

Syna shook her head. “No. There’s no pickups in here, and no speaker for her to respond through. I have to do it from the hall.”

He grinned. “Ooooh, unchaperoned. I like it.”

She laughed, her blush renewed. Warmth flooded out from her, her emotions a sea he wanted to swim in. She has no idea how sexy she is, he realized. On impulse, he leaned forward and kissed her.

She froze for a heartbeat and a flicker of panic went through him, then her hand tangled in his hair and tugged him closer. Her body crushed against him and any control he’d aspired to evaporated. The heat of her body soaked through his skin, suffused him as he lost himself in her.

She broke the kiss long enough to take a breath, then tugged his hair back to bite along his jawline. The combination of teeth and tongue overloaded Galen’s senses. His knees lost any sense of strength they had, and he reached out for support with one hand.

There was a soft pop and a whiff of electrical smoke. She pulled up from the kiss and touched her nose-tip to his, a quiet smile playing across her mouth. “Please tell me you didn’t just rip out my lovely bypass.”

About JC Hay

JC Hay writes romantic science fiction and space opera, because the coolest gadgets in the world are useless without someone to share them.

Website: http://jchay.com

Newsletter Sign-Up (get a free Corporate Services
short story!): http://jchay.com/mailing-list-sign-up/