SFRB Recommends #82: Escape From Zulaire by Veronica Scott

Andi Markriss hasn’t exactly enjoyed being the houseguest of the planetary high-lord, but her company sent her to represent them at a political wedding. When hotshot Sectors Special Forces Captain Tom Deverane barges in on the night of the biggest social event of the summer, Andi isn’t about to offend her high-ranking host on Deverane’s say-so—no matter how sexy he is, or how much he believes they need to leave now.

Deverane was thinking about how to spend his retirement bonus when HQ assigned him one last mission: rescue a civilian woman stranded on a planet on the verge of civil war. Someone has pulled some serious strings to get her plucked out of the hot zone. Deverane’s never met anyone so hard-headed—or so appealing. Suddenly his mission to protect this one woman has become more than just mere orders.

I shortened this excerpt, because I think the events are fun enough to discover on their own.

This novel takes place over a very short period of time, and the world of Zulaire springs to life quickly. Rich sensory detail makes the environments vivid. Scott sets up several intriguing cultures and factions that left me wanting to spend more time in Zulaire. 

The action and chase scenes are clear and well-paced. The baddies are creepy. The blend of action movie and intriguing worldbuilding is not one I find often.

This recommendation by Lee Koven.
Author/book site: Escape from Zulaire - Veronica Scott

Don't Miss Out On The Growing Audio Book Audience + Giveaway

Talking about audiobooks today and giving away one copy of the WRECK OF THE NEBULA DREAM audiobook to a randomly selected commenter.

People often ask me why I'm so determined to have audiobook versions of my novels and the simple answer is that there's a huge and growing audience out there who enjoys listening to a good story. While many people listen to audiobooks in their car or otherwise commuting, there's an audience which enjoys the experience of hearing a good book while they multitask. Even in the shower!

Last year I had the wonderful experience of making an audiobook version of my award winning WRECK OF THE NEBULA DREAM with Actor/Narrator Michael Riffle. I've written extensively about the process in a series of posts on my own blog. You can find the first post here which links to the others, if you're interested.

Briefly, I went through Audiobook Creation Exchange (ACX), which is a division of Audible, so I can only speak to that experience. ACX is wonderfully set up to keep things simple for the author, the actor and the producer, which I appreciated. For my first audiobook I couldn't afford to pay an hourly rate (usually between $200-$400 per "finished hour" - my book runs about 9 hours). ACX offers a contract vehicle whereby author and actor split the royalties 50/50 and no money is paid up front. Of course if it turns out you've created the Harry Potter or 50 Shades of audiobooks and have a runaway hit, your actor will become very wealthy over the life of the distribution contract!  Now WRECK may be an Amazon best seller and award winning, but I wasn't too concerned that I might be signing away millions. (And I appreciate working with Michael so much I might not have minded anyway LOL.)

At first though, I wasn't getting very many quality auditions. Then ACX put my book into their stipend program, where they pay $1500.00 to the actor when the book is completed. I paid nothing, just split future royalties as they come in. Then I got numerous auditions and was fortunate enough to find Michael, who embodied my special forces hero of the future perfectly.

Unless you're a trained actor as well as an author, don't read your own book! First of all, reading is very different from acting and getting all the characters to sound different and believable, and convey the right emotions is a huge challenge. Secondly, there's a definite art involved in the production of the sound quality. Michael put in many hours behind the scenes for every finished hour of the book.

I LOVED listening to the audiobook as he finished each chapter. I found that hearing how a trained actor interpreted the dialog and what he brought to the characters gave me new insights. Of course the book had already been published so we couldn't change anything, but I got a lot of ideas for the sequel. Chapter 7 is my favorite, listened to it three times. Even Michael said he got choked up while narrating that one and had to re-record parts of it. (No spoilers here though!)

This year Michael and I are doing the audio version of ESCAPE FROM ZULAIRE, and we've cast an actress to read the heroine and other female characters with him. I think this is going to be an amazing project and can't wait to have the audiobook available.

I'm happy to answer any questions and I am giving away a free copy of WRECK to one randomly selected commenter. I'll pick the winner at 6PM on the 29th.....

Here's the blurb for WRECK OF THE NEBULA DREAM:

Traveling unexpectedly aboard the luxury liner Nebula Dream on its maiden voyage across the galaxy, Sectors Special Forces Captain Nick Jameson is ready for ten relaxing days, and hoping to forget his last disastrous mission behind enemy lines. He figures he’ll gamble at the casino, take in the shows, maybe even have a shipboard fling with Mara Lyrae, the beautiful but reserved businesswoman he meets.

All his plans vaporize when the ship suffers a wreck of Titanic proportions. Captain and crew abandon ship, leaving the 8000 passengers stranded without enough lifeboats and drifting unarmed in enemy territory. Aided by Mara, Nick must find a way off the doomed ship for himself and several other innocent people before deadly enemy forces reach them or the ship’s malfunctioning engines finish ticking down to self destruction.

But can Nick conquer the demons from his past that tell him he’ll fail these innocent people just as he failed to save his Special Forces team? Will he outpace his own doubts to win this vital race against time?

Available at Amazon in all formats and wherever else eBooks are sold.

How I Fell Into Self Publishing or Blame It On The Titanic

I didn't actually set out to self publish. I had sold my first novella to Carina Press - a paranormal romance set in ancient Egypt - and was all caught up in the work of editing, learning the ropes of promo and getting better at navigating social media in late 2011, when I realized that 2012 was the 100th anniversary of the sinking of Titanic. This become relevant because I had a completed science fiction adventure novel with romantic elements, which I'd set aside when Carina bought the Egyptian novella. And the book, WRECK OF THE NEBULA DREAM, was loosely based on Titanic, but set in the far future, in outer space.

Uh oh, sounds like a book that an author would definitely want to have out there in the world for Readers to discover during the 100th anniversary hoopla, doesn't it? Because the 101st anniversary of anything just doesn't command as much attention. At this point it was December 2011. There was literally no time  to submit the manuscript to anyone, not even Carina, much less to go through a publisher's editing and release process. So, self publishing is where I went!

I commissioned a cover from the wonderful Fiona Jayde, I had the book edited during January, formatted in late February and released in March of 2012. I put together my own small blog tour, did promo where I could, wrote LOTS of blogs about all aspects of Titanic...had terrific encouragement from Heather Massey at The Galaxy Express in particular, and along the way I discovered I really loved self publishing. I'm kind of a control freak by nature, I write fast and my Muse likes to pick and choose what stories to tell.

Don't get me wrong, I love Carina and they've been excellent to work with...but it's very satisfying to choose your own cover art and to get new books out on your schedule, rather than on the publisher's schedule.

PROs of self publishing in my opinion:

• Total control of the book, from cover to edits to distribution
• Ability to publish as often as I have a high quality product ready to offer the Readers. I'd hoped to get four books out this year (counting my second Carina book), only got three plus an audiobook of WRECK. I do have a day job. I learned a lot this year, about self publishing in general and about managing my "schedule of releases". Going to try for four new books released in 2014.
• Advice and guidance from a wonderful community of other self published and/or hybrid authors. If you're even thinking of dipping a toe into self publishing, I recommend joining the Yahoo group established and moderated by Marie Force  - here's the link http://groups.yahoo.com/neo/groups/selfpublish/info . She and many other authors share advice and information generously. I've learned SO much from the group...
• Ability to write whatever story you want to tell (although you might not draw a large number of readers if no one else wanted to read the particular tale you've penned) and see it published.

CONS:

• It's a business. That works for me because I have a degree in business, plus years of experience in contracts, and all the many details of being your own publisher don't daunt me. But it is very different than having a publisher handling all the tracking, the copyrights, the ISBN's, formatting, uploading, pricing, Netgalley, pirates, whathaveyou. Some people love doing it all themselves, others not so much. The business deducts from your writing time...
• I think there's a benefit to being part of a publisher's group of authors, especially if they cross promote each other or if the publisher does visible promo, or is well known. But that being said, you can find your own community in self publishing, as with the wonderful SFR Brigade we have here...

I'm sure others can add pros and cons to this list but those are at the top of my mind. I self published ESCAPE FROM ZULAIRE, which also became an Amazon Best Seller in SFR, and the most recent paranormal, DANCER OF THE NILE. For now I'm firmly entrenched in the self publishing world and loving it. Never say never, I wouldn't mind being more of a hybrid author, but right now I'm concentrating on my own little "publishing empire" (don't I wish it was an empire LOL, more of a tenacious colony at the moment).

You can find me: Blog  @vscotttheauthor   Facebook

I'm happy to try to answer any questions about my experiences in self publishing and I'll check back on the comments after the day job!

New SFR: Escape From Zulaire

Cover Artist: Fiona Jayde

I'm pleased to announce that my new, self published science fiction romance Escape From Zulaire was released last week. The story takes place in the same universe as  last year's SFR Galaxy Award winner Wreck of the Nebula Dream, but the two novels aren’t otherwise connected. My heroine in the new book, Andi Markriss, works for the same galactic shipping company that Mara Lyrae was employed by in WRECK, but that’s the only tiny connection. Good old Loxton Galactic Trading – they like to hire strong willed, independent women who stay cool in a crisis.

Here’s the story:

Andi Markriss hasn’t exactly enjoyed being the houseguest of the planetary high-lord, but her company sent her to represent them at a political wedding. When hotshot Sectors Special Forces Captain Tom Deverane barges in on the night of the biggest social event of the summer, Andi isn’t about to offend her high-ranking host on Deverane’s say-so—no matter how sexy he is, or how much he believes they need to leave now.

Deverane was thinking about how to spend his retirement bonus when HQ assigned him one last mission: rescue a civilian woman stranded on a planet on the verge of civil war. Someone has pulled some serious strings to get her plucked out of the hot zone. Deverane’s never met anyone so hard-headed—or so appealing. Suddenly his mission to protect this one woman has become more than just mere orders.

That mission proves more dangerous than he expected when rebel fighters attack the village and raze it to the ground. Deverane escapes with Andi, and on their hazardous journey through the wilderness, Andi finds herself fighting her uncomfortable attraction to the gallant and courageous captain. But Deverane’s not the type to settle down, and running for one’s life doesn’t leave much time to explore a romance.

Then Andi is captured by the rebel fighters, but Deverane has discovered that Zulaire’s so-called civil war is part of a terrifying alien race’s attempt to subjugate the entire Sector. If he pushes on to the capitol Andi will die. Deverane must decide whether to save the woman he loves, or sacrifice her to save Zulaire.

***********

So the idea for ESCAPE’s plot is based in a real life incident that happened in India in 1857. The events in India during this period go by many names, depending who’s telling the story, but one common term is the Sepoy Rebellion. I was always fascinated how so many British women and children in India at the time were caught totally unaware, suddenly in the middle of a really awful war, and the people they trusted and looked to for help were the very ones determined to kill them. I always wondered how it would feel to be in the middle of such a situation and what I’d do.

My novel is not a retelling of the Sepoy events in any way. Unlike WRECK, which was loosely based on the sinking of the Titanic, ESCAPE only takes the very basic idea and then runs with it. When the book starts, the heroine knows things aren’t quite right, she’s a guest at an isolated compound hundreds of miles from safety…and then one afternoon Sectors Special Forces Captain Tom Deverane shows up and the situation goes downhill from there.

Available on AMAZON  Nook  Kobo   Print on Demand paperback coming soon.

You can find me at Blog  @vscotttheauthor   Facebook