Hi everyone. Today I am featuring "Cruiser Dreams" by: Janet Morris. This month her book is on sale for $2.99. Make sure to grab it for this discounted rate. Also check out her guest post, sneak peek, book details, and giveaway below. Happy reading everyone :).
What is something unique/quirky about you?
I breed Morgan horses. I consult with Morgan breeders to help them choose breeding combinations to achieve a desired result.
I am also a song writer; I play bass guitar with my husband Chris who sings and plays guitar. We have an album on MCA records. Look for Christopher Crosby Morris on N1M.com and his album Everybody Knows on Amazon Music.
Can you, for those who don’t know you already, tell something about yourself and how you became an author?
I wrote my first novel, High Couch of Silistra in 1975; a friend sent it to an agent who chose to represent me; I had already written the second book in the Silistra Quartet and my agent told me not to disclose that until they finalized the contract for the first one. When the publisher, Bantam Books learned of the others, they bought the succeeding three. When the fourth book was published, the series already had four million copies in print. Suddenly I was a novelist specializing in environmental, gender, historical and political subjects. In the process, Chris became my editor and ultimately a co-writer. Since then, we have co-authored many books.
Who is your hero and why?
Heraclitus of Ephesus, a pre-socratic philosopher, whose Cosmic Fragments foreshadow our knowledge of reality and how to perceive it. Among his precepts is the statement that change alone is unchanging. I’ve worked Heraclitus’ fragments in here and there throughout our books.
Which of your novels can you imagine being made into a movie?
All of them. I write cinematically, our books are vivid adventures I undertake writing them without knowing the destination. I, the Sun, The Sacred Band, and Outpassage are particularly suited to film. The Threshold Series is a feast of opportunities for today’s special effects creators.
What inspired you, to write Cruiser Dreams?
Like the rest of my generation, I was inspired by the rapid development of computer technology and the thought that it might become sentient one day. I began to imagine how it would be to put our trust in machines to take us far beyond our own human reach. Cruiser Dreams is that story.
Convince us why you feel Cruiser Dreams is a must read.
Cruiser Dreams is a continuing exploration of a far future human culture that has developed artificial intelligence to a point where space-faring ships pilot themselves through regions of space where time is fluid and human navigational skills are ill-suited. However, these smart ships need a biological clock as a check on their purely mechanistic capabilities and therefore need to partner with trusted human pilots to enter and exit these fluid regions called spongespace. Shebat, our protagonist, is a practitioner of primitive magic arts and is uniquely gifted, a quality which, when combined with her omniscient spacecraft leads an entire culture where it has never been.
Who designed your book covers?
Most of my covers, including Cruiser Dreams, are realized by Roy Mauritsen, a gifted graphic artist.
Advice to writers?
As for advice to writers, here is all I know: write the story you want to read. Start at the beginning, go to the end, and stop. Seriously. From start to finish you must inhabit the construct in a manner that makes the reader choose to continue; if I, as the writer, can’t feel what it’s like being there, my readers can’t either. So close your eyes, look at your feet where they are standing on the story’s ground; tell me what you see. Tell me what you hear. Ask at the end of each paragraph ‘what happens next?’ If you lose touch with it, wait until you’re back inside it. Tell the story that comes to you, and from you to me.
The cruisers called.
She answered.
Cruiser Dreams
Kerrion Empire Book 2
by: Janet Morris
Genre: Fantasy, Science Fiction
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One full moon in tinderbox autumn, the legend of “Shebat of the Enchanters’ Fire” was graven a second time into the consciousness of twenty-third-century man.
It happened over the rubble-strewn streets of New York City, as it had happened once before, upstate.
The enchanter who witnessed the event could do nothing about it: his horse screamed and reared and pawed the wind’s dark tresses. Like the ignorant natives of Earth, there was no convincing the nervy black stallion that the roar swooping down upon the city, followed by light from a midnight sun, was not supernatural in origin.
When the light blinked out, and the roar turned to a keening whine, when above their heads a softer glow illuminated two figures hanging by a ladder from the belly of Leviathan—then trouble, swathed in the hoary robes of religion, began. There was not one enchanter among the lot of those secessionist oppressors who had fled from Orrefors space to make a last stand on ancient, wizened Earth who did not recognize the danger. But there was nothing they could do.
The two figures danced wildly, hanging from their ladder before the moon.
Alley dwellers and scavengers edged out from hiding into the intersection where the miracle had just taken place, heedless of the enchanter in the face of this more astounding magic.
When he had his horse calmed, he rode it full tilt through the midst of them: order must be preserved.
*
Her fingers would never hold her.
She would fall back down among the ruins, die upon impact. All that would be left of her would be her bracelet, wailing and blinking green in a puddle of sticky red pulp.
The wind rushed round her ears, her pulse thundered louder than the ship drawing them upward. She craned her neck, squinting in the lemony illumination from the shuttle’s bottom. In the middle of the glowing waffle-work was a dark maw. Into that the ladder was being drawn. Around the edges of one of the supergravity pads, St. Elmo’s fire danced, a product of the strain on the system.
Shebat hung from the lowest rung.
On the rung just above hers, another pair of hands clung desperately to life.
He called out something: the wind and whine stole away his words.
The ladder swung wildly, half its length swallowed up. If they should be gusted against those bright quiltings, they would never even realize that they were about to die.
BLURB:
FROM THE AUTHOR OF THE INTERNATIONALLY RENOWNED SILISTRA QUARTET.
The cruisers called.
She answered.
Cruiser Dreams, Book II in the three-book Kerrion Empire saga
Cruiser Dreams . . . She is heir to an empire beyond all imagining, where interstellar cruisers have become increasingly sentient and man's role among the stars is transformed.
In this epic of political treachery, interstellar security, human passion, and artificial intelligence, Morris continues the saga of the fiery girl Shebat, stolen away from a decaying and primitive Earth to be the adoptive heir to the Kerrion Empire. Molded to serve the designs of the Kerrion state, Shebat instead becomes the harbinger of change sweeping the civilized stars.
Against the chaotic background of simultaneous social and technological revolutions, Shebat finds that the man she loves is her implacable enemy, that the man she reluctantly married is perhaps her single ally, and that her space-faring cruiser may be her only true friend.
October’s featured title with Perseid Press - On Sale for Only $2.99!
Purchase your Copy Today!
Praise for Dream Dancer Book I in the three-part saga of the Kerrion Empire:
"A fascinating and lyrical story, told with great invention..."
— Peter Straub, author of Shadowland and Ghost Story
"Not since Dune have we witnessed a power struggle of such awesome intensity!"
— Eric Van Lustbader, author of The Ninja and The Bourne Legacy.
Praise for Cruiser Dreams:
"Packed with intrigue, spiced with romance . . ."
— Publishers Weekly
"Fascinating . . . Recommended!"
— Booklist
Praise for the Kerrion Empire series:
"A fascinating and lyrical story, told with great invention..."
— Peter Straub, author of Shadowland and Ghost Story
"Not since Dune have we witnessed a power struggle of such awesome intensity!"
— Eric Van Lustbader, author of The Ninja and The Bourne Legacy.
"Packed with intrigue, spiced with romance . . ."
— Publishers Weekly
"Fascinating . . . Recommended!"
— Booklist
Janet Morris
Best selling author Janet Morris began writing in 1976 and has since published more than 30 novels, many co-authored with her husband Chris Morris or others. She has contributed short fiction to the shared universe fantasy series Thieves World, in which she created the Sacred Band of Stepsons, a mythical unit of ancient fighters modeled on the Sacred Band of Thebes. She created, orchestrated, and edited the Bangsian fantasy series Heroes in Hell, writing stories for the series as well as co-writing the related novel, The Little Helliad, with Chris Morris. She wrote the bestselling Silistra Quartet in the 1970s, including High Couch of Silistra, The Golden Sword, Wind from the Abyss, and The Carnelian Throne. This quartet had more than four million copies in Bantam print alone, and was translated into German, French, Italian, Russian and other languages. In the 1980s, Baen Books released a second edition of this landmark series. The third edition is the Author's Cut edition, newly revised by the author for Perseid Press. Most of her fiction work has been in the fantasy and science fiction genres, although she has also written historical and other novels. Morris has written, contributed to, or edited several book-length works of non-fiction, as well as papers and articles on nonlethal weapons, developmental military technology and other defense and national security topics.
Janet says: 'People often ask what book to read first. I recommend "I, the Sun" if you like ancient history; "The Sacred Band," a novel, if you like heroic fantasy; "Lawyers in Hell" if you like historical fantasy set in hell; "Outpassage" if you like hard science fiction; "High Couch of Silistra" if you like far-future dystopian or philosophical novels. I am most enthusiastic about the definitive Perseid Press Author's Cut editions, which I revised and expanded.'
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Choice of print or ebook copy of Cruiser Dreams,
$10 Amazon Gift Card
— 1 winner each!
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I enjoyed the guest post. Thanks for sharing.