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Showing posts with label Amber Royer. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Amber Royer. Show all posts

Thursday, February 13, 2020

Cover Reveal - FAKE CHOCOLATE by Amber Royer!


The Qwillery is thrilled to host the cover reveal for the 3rd novel in Amber Royer's Chocoverse  - FAKE CHOCOLATE!


When disease ravages Earth’s cacao plantations, Bo Benitez returns home to help with the media spin to hide that chocolate is in danger of being lost forever. HGB has come up with a new product - one which doesn’t appease the cocoa-addicted murderous, shark-toothed aliens threatening to invade the planet. Someone has to smooth things out. Just when Bo starts to make headway, someone tries to kidnap her. While trying to avoid more would-be-kidnappers, Bo finds out that HGB is developing a cure for withdrawal from the Invincible Heart. Will she let her need to be physically whole again tie her to HGB and its enigmatic CEO? When she gets a key piece of evidence that would unravel secrets from three different planets, she has tough choices to make about the future of her world and its place in the galaxy.

Fake Chocolate will be available in paperback and Kindle eBook on April 14, 2020!

Pre-order Fake Chocolate at Amazon and Barnes and Noble!




Space Pirates
by
Amber Royer

As a writer, influences come from a ton of different places and can pop up in your work years, even decades later. And when one idea sparks off another, those influences can be changed in ways you couldn’t have imagined before you started writing. With the Chocoverse, where there’s about to be a galactic war over controlling the source of chocolate, one big plot thread centers around space pirates who are known to grapple onto chocolate transport vessels, space the crew and take the cargo. Brill, the romantic lead in the series, is constantly reminding people he’s not a pirate - he’s a gray trader. Which goes a long way in defining his moral code. Even though he does questionable things over the course of the trilogy, there are some big lines he won’t cross.

People keep asking how I thought up the Chocoverse, and why I wrote it. There are a number of aspects and reasons. But for the inclusion of the space pirates, it is simple.

When I was a kid, we lived close enough to Galveston, Texas, to daytrip across to the island. After my husband and I first got married, we were even known to take the occasional ferry ride over just for dinner. We were spoiled to fresh Gulf Coast seafood, and after-dinner walks along the moonlit beach. As long as it wasn’t jellyfish season. And there wasn’t a high concentration of washed-up seaweed or tar balls. (If you’re not from Texas, here’s an explanation of what a tar ball is: http://www.texasmonthly.com/the-culture/texas-primer-the-tar-ball/).

Galveston doesn’t rate tops as a beach destination. But one thing it does have is history. And I’ve always been fascinated with it. Not one, but two, of my early (eck, unpublishable) novels were set in the midst of the events leading up to the 1900 hurricane that devastated the island. (https://www.1900storm.com/). I took a run at it as historical fiction, then again as time travel. When I was doing the research, I spent a lot of time upstairs in the Special Collections section of the Rosenberg Library, handling with gloved hands original letters survivors wrote in the aftermath of the devastation, learning about the way they piped sand in from underwater in order to raise the island farther up out of the ocean by fifteen feet (watch this video detailing it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=beGT8OkWwBE) and then topping it with a sea wall to brace against another storm. (2008’s Hurricane Ike took a similar path across the island, and while the damage was still devastating, it was mitigated by the sea wall).

But there was something else that happened as a result of raising the island. Jean Lafitte’s pirate treasure - if it every really existed - was lost forever under fifteen feet worth of new soil, and the already vague ideas about the potential location were made worthless when the landmarks all changed. (http://therecordlive.com/2009/04/29/jean-lafitte-legendary-gulf-pirate-is-some-of-his-gold-still-buried-here/) People today are still looking for the treasure up Texas rivers, and in Lafitte’s other favorite town, New Orleans.

There’s so much mystery surrounding Lafitte - nobody even knows for sure when he was born or when he died (either in exile or in battle, depending in which sources you believe). And how history views him as a person - well, that varies. After all, one historian’s pirate is another historian’s privateer.

A privateer is a pirate who is backed by a specific government, who is legally allowed to commit acts of piracy against ships from countries with which that country is at odds. Even then, it wasn’t always clear cut. As part of his brother Pierre’s operation, Lafitte likely got his first Letter of Marque (privateer sponsorship) from the French, in Saint-Domingue (now Haiti). (This of course cannot be verified - the sources keep hedging with statements like, “Ramsay speculates that Lafitte was born in the French colony of Saint-Domingue. . .” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jean_Lafitte ). That early privateering would have started around 1805. But by the time war broke out in 1812, a number of the Lafitte Brothers’ boats had Letters of Marque from the United States - and the British. And other governments, too. According to GoNOLA.com, “Goods captured from British ships were supposed to be turned over to the US, but it was hard to tell what was what, so the Americans quickly felt double-crossed by Lafitte and his men. On November 13, 1812, the Americans raided Barataria, arrested the Lafittes and 25 of their men and confiscated all of their goods. The borthers Lafitte made bail but then skipped, not returning for trial. Pierre was re-arrested in 1813 and jailed. Jean continued the smuggling and piracy . . .” http://gonola.com/2011/10/26/nola-history-jean-lafitte-the-pirate.html

Even after that, when the British offered Lafitte a pardon for his crimes in exchange for information that could turn the tide of the war, Lafitte refused, honoring his previous loyalties. (His brother was “allowed to escape” from prison, as a sort of a thank-you for this.) Yet later, we see Lafitte in the role of spy, assisting the Spanish in their attempts to stop Mexico from gaining independence. So it is really hard to see what his motives were in all of this, and where his values lay. Many of his decisions can be explained best in terms of self-interest and profit. And yet, he was a folk hero, even during his own lifetime.

It was this complexity and moral ambiguity about pirates that fascinated me (and reading Treasure Island as a kid didn’t hurt.) There is such of a sense of romance surrounding pirates - and yet, if you look at accounts of actual modern-day piracy, you can see how coldly horrific their actions must have been. That’s something I wanted to explore a bit with the galactic-level pirates in Free Chocolate.

On some geeky level, space pirates are just cool. Look at the joy protagonist Mark Watney feels in The Martian, when he’s able - through some quirks of real-world international law - to say, "After I board Ares 4, before talking to NASA, I will take control of a craft in international waters without permission. That makes me a pirate! A space pirate!"

But I didn’t want to just slap the word “space” in front of everything and consider it a magnification of the earth equivalent. (The silliness of that is explored in this TvTropes article over here: http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/SpacePirates -- but don’t blame me if you get sucked in clicking links to other terms on their site.)

And on a practical level, look at Treasure Planet, which completely bombed at the box office (though it’s my second favorite Treasure island film adaptation - right after Muppet Treasure Island.) It probably did so poorly in part because “Space pirates,” as a term is almost a joke (which makes it a good thing I’m writing a comedy). There are other universes where characters are committing piracy (erherm, I’m looking at you Firefly), but they just don’t call it that. Which makes it more palatable. But Free Chocolate’s supposed to be funny, so I let the characters use the term. At one point in Book 3 Bo is exasperated about being kidnapped by space pirates. Again.





Previously in the Chocoverse

Free Chocolate
Chocoverse 1
Angry Robot, June 5, 2018
Trade Paperback and eBook, 448 pages

Latina culinary arts student, Bo Benitez, becomes a fugitive when she’s caught stealing a cacao pod from the heavily-defended plantations that keep chocolate, Earth’s sole valuable export, safe from a hungry galaxy. Forces arraying against her including her alien boyfriend and a reptilian cop. But when she escapes onto an unmarked starship things go from bad to worse: it belongs to the race famed throughout the galaxy for eating stowaways. Surrounded by dangerous yet hunky aliens, Bo starts to uncover clues that the threat to Earth may be bigger than she first thought.

Amazon : Barnes and Noble : Book Depository
Books-A-Million : IndieBound : iBooks : Kobo








Pure Chocolate
Chocoverse 2
Angry Robot, March 5, 2019
Trade Paperback and eBook, 464 pages

To save everyone she loves, Bo Benitez is touring Zant, home of the murderous, shark-toothed aliens who so recently tried to eat her. In the midst of her stint as Galactic paparazzi princess, she discovers that Earth has been exporting tainted chocolate to the galaxy, and getting aliens hooked on cocoa. Bo must choose whether to go public, or just smile for the cameras and make it home alive. She’s already struggling with her withdrawal from the Invincible Heart, and her love life has a life of its own, but when insidious mind worms intervene, things start to get complicated!

Amazon : Barnes and Noble : Books-A-Million : IndieBound : iBooks : Kobo








Chocoverse Short Stories

There is a Chocoverse short story in Amazing Stories, Issue 5: "When Kromish Eyes are Smiling" - Bo winds up having to cooperate with one of Brill’s friends after the two of them are kidnapped by a bounty hunter with a penchant for strategy games. Get the issue at Amazon.



And a Chocoverse short story, "Sublingual Breakdown", at Book Funnel: https://dl.bookfunnel.com/ykptvm4g95






About Amber

Amber Royer is the author of the high-energy comedic space opera Chocoverse series (Free Chocolate, Pure Chocolate available now. Fake Chocolate coming April 2020). She teaches creative writing classes for teens and adults through both the University of Texas at Arlington Continuing Education Department and Writing Workshops Dallas. She is the discussion leader for the Saturday Night Write writing craft group. She spent five years as a youth librarian, where she organized teen writers’ groups and teen writing contests. In addition to two cookbooks co-authored with her husband, Amber has published a number of articles on gardening, crafting and cooking for print and on-line publications.They are currently documenting a project growing Cacao trees indoors.

Website  ~  Facebook  ~  Twitter @amber_royer  ~  Instagram





Click on the image to learn more about the Chocoverse at Amber's website!

Monday, March 04, 2019

The View From Monday - March 4, 2019


Happy 1st Monday in March!

There are 6 debuts this week:

Creation (Spin Trilogy 1) by Andrew Bannister;

Famous Men Who Never Lived by K. Chess;

The Migration by Helen Marshall;

The Reign of the Kingfisher by T.J. Martinson;

Infinite Detail by Tim Maughan;

and

Today I Am Carey by Martin L. Shoemaker.

Clicking on a novel's cover will take you to its Amazon page.



From formerly featured DAC Authors:

Fireweed and Brimstone (Grim Reality 3) by Boone Brux;

In the Valley of the Sun by Andy Davidson is out in Trade Paperback;

The Point by John Dixon is out in Trade Paperback;

Mahimata (Asiana 2) by Rati Mehotra;

The Bayern Agenda by Dan Moren,

If This Goes On: The Science Fiction Future of Today's Politics edited by Cat Rambo;

Pure Chocolate (Chocoverse 2) by Amber Royer;

and

The Last Dog on Earth by Adrian J. Walker.

Clicking on a novel's cover will take you to its Amazon page.






Debut novels are highlighted in blue. Novels, etc. by formerly featured DAC Authors are highlighted in green.

March 5, 2019
TITLEAUTHORSERIES
12 Tales Lie, 1 Tells True (e) Maria Alexander H - Collection
The Sea Beast Takes a Lover: Stories (h2tp) Michael Andreasen LF/SS/CF - Collection
Invisible Ecologies Rachel Armstrong HSF/SF
Creation Machine (D) Andrew Bannister SF/SO/HSF - Spin Trilogy 1
Ancestral Night Elizabeth Bear SF/SO - White Space 1
Wild Country Anne Bishop DF/CF/AH - World of the Others 2
Firebrand (tp2mm) Kristen Britain F/DF - Green Rider 6
Famous Men Who Never Lived (D) K. Chess SF/AP/PA
In the Valley of the Sun (h2tp) Andy Davidson H
Hoka! Hoka! Hoka! (ri) Gordon R. Dickson
Poul Anderson
SF/SO
The Point (h2tp) John Dixon SF/Th
String City Graham Edwards SF
Emergent Lance Erlick CyP/GenEng - Android Chronicles 3
Jacked Cat Jive Rhys Ford CF - Kai Gracen Series 3
Mad Lizard Mambo (ri) Rhys Ford CF - Kai Gracen Series 2
Black Dog Blues (ri) Rhys Ford CF - Kai Gracen Series 1
Good Omens: The Nice and Accurate Prophecies of Agnes Nutter, Witch (ri) Neil Gaiman
Terry Pratchett
MTI/F/HU
The Women's War Jenna Glass F - The Women's War 1
The Far Far Better Thing (e) Auston Habershaw F/DF - Saga of the Redeemed
Alice Payne Rides Kate Heartfield SF/TT/SP - Alice Payne 2
The Controllers Paul Kane SF - Collection
The Hunger (h2tp) Alma Katsu PsyTh/Hist/Occ/Sup
Another Kingdom Andrew Klavan F - Another Kingdom 1
The Wall John Lanchester LF/Dys
The Migration (D) Helen Marshall Dys/LF/H
The Reign of the Kingfisher (D) T.J. Martinson Sus/SH
Infinite Detail (D) Tim Maughan SF/Dys
That Ain't Witchcraft Seanan McGuire UF/P/HU - InCryptid 8
Mahimata Rati Mehrotra F - Asiana 2
While You Sleep Stephanie Merritt Th
The Bayern Agenda Dan Moren SF/Th - Galactic Cold War 1
Gingerbread Helen Oyeyemi LF/FairyT/FolkT/LM/MR
If This Goes On: The Science Fiction Future of Today's Politics Cat Rambo (Ed) SF - Anthology
The Unknown Soldier (e)(ri) Mickey Zucker Reichert F
Voices of the Fall John Ringo (Ed)
Gary Poole (Ed)
SF - Black Tide Rising Anthology
Pure Chocolate Amber Royer SF/SO/SFR - The Chocoverse 2
Today I Am Carey (D) Martin L. Shoemaker SF/HSF
The Last Dog on Earth Adrian J. Walker Dys/SF/AP/PA



March 6, 2019
TITLEAUTHORSERIES
Knowledgeable Creatures: A Tor.com Original (e) Christopher Rowe F



March 8, 2019
TITLEAUTHORSERIES
Fireweed and Brimstone (e) Boone Brux UF - Grim Reality 3
Blood They Brought and Other Stories Ed Kurtz H - Collection



D - Debut
e - eBook
Ed - Editor
h2mm - Hardcover to Mass Market Paperback
h2tp - Hardcover to Trade Paperback
ri - reissue or reprint
tp2mm - Trade Paperback to Mass Market Paperback
Tr - Translator



AB - Absurdist
AC - Alien Contact
AH - Alternative History
AP - Apocalyptic
CF - Contemporary Fantasy
CoA - Coming of Age
Cr - Crime
CyP - Cyberpunk
DF - Dark Fantasy
Dys - Dystopian
F - Fantasy
FairyT - Fairy Tales
FolkT - Folk Tales
FR - Fantasy Romance
GenEng - Genetic Engineering
GH - Ghost(s)
H - Horror
Hist - Historical
HistF - Historical Fantasy
HSF - Hard Science Fiction
HU - Humor
LF - Literary Fiction
LM - Legend and Mythology
M - Mystery
MR - Magical Realism
MTI - Media Tie-In
Occ - Occult
P - Paranormal
PA - Post Apocalyptic
PCM - Parnormal Cozy Mystery
PerfArts - Performing Arts
PNR - Paranormal Romance
Psy - Psychological
PsyTh - Psychological Thriller
RF - Romantic Fantasy
SE - Space Exploration
SF - Science Fiction
SFR - Science Fiction Romance
SH - Superheroes
SO - Space Opera
SP - Steampunk
Spec - Speculative
SpecFic - Speculative Fiction
SS - Short Stories
Sup - Supernatural
SupTh - Supernatural Thriller
Sus - Suspense
TechTh - Technological Thriller
Th - Thriller
TT - Time Travel
UF - Urban Fantasy
VisM - Visionary and Metaphysical

Note: Not all genres and formats are found in the books, etc. listed above.

Wednesday, January 02, 2019

2018 Debut Author Challenge Cover Wars - Debut Cover of the Year!






It's time to vote for the 2018 Debut Author Challenge COVER OF THE YEAR! Below you will find the 12 monthly winners in alphabetical order by book title (excluding "the" or "a" or "an", etc.).

Vote for your favorite from the monthly 2018 Winners!

I'm using PollCode for this vote. After you the check the circle next to your favorite, click "Vote" to record your vote. If you'd like to see the real-time results click "View". This will take you to the PollCode site where you may see the results. If you want to come back to The Qwillery click "Back" and you will return to this page.

Voting will end sometime on January 15, 2019 unless voting is extended.

Vote for your favorite 2018 Debut Cover!
 
pollcode.com free polls





October
Cover illustration by Jeremy D. Mohler





March
Cover design by Les Solot
Images: Depositphotos





July
Cover art by Sam Weber





December
Cover art by Shawn T. King - STK•Kreations





November
Cover artwork by Amir Zand, amirzandartist.com
Cover design by Mona Lin





June
Cover art by Mingchen Shen





April
Cover by Tran Nguyen





August
Cover Art by Argh! Nottingham





February





January
Jacket design and illustration by Michael Morris





September
Cover design by Mona Lin
Cover illustration courtesy of Jeff Chapman





May
Jacket design by Sarah Brody
Jacket illustration © MagdalenaWasiczek / Trevillion Images

Thursday, July 05, 2018

2018 Debut Author Challenge Cover Wars - June Winner


After an epic battle between Free Chocolate and The Traitor God (both published by Angry Robot), the winner of the June 2018 Debut Author Challenge Cover Wars is Free Chocolate by Amber Royer with 47% of the votes. The cover art is by Mingchen Shen.


Free Chocolate
Angry Robot, June 5, 2018
Trade Paperback and eBook, 448 pages

In the far future, chocolate is Earth’s sole unique product - and it’s one that everyone else in the galaxy would kill to get their hands, paws, and tentacles on

Latina culinary arts student, Bo Benitez, becomes a fugitive when she’s caught stealing a cacao pod from the heavily-defended plantations that keep chocolate, Earth’s sole valuable export, safe from a hungry galaxy. Forces arraying against her including her alien boyfriend and a reptilian cop. But when she escapes onto an unmarked starship things go from bad to worse: it belongs to the race famed throughout the galaxy for eating stowaways. Surrounded by dangerous yet hunky aliens, Bo starts to uncover clues that the threat to Earth may be bigger than she first thought.

File Under: Science Fiction [ Heiress Apparent | Sticky Fingers | Pod People | The Milky Way ]
Amazon : Barnes and Noble : Book Depository : Books-A-Million : IndieBound
iBooks : Kobo





The Results






The June 2018 Debuts

Friday, June 15, 2018

2018 Debut Author Challenge Cover Wars - June Debuts




Each month you will be able to vote for your favorite cover from that month's debut novels. At the end of the year the 12 monthly winners will be pitted against each other to choose the 2018 Debut Novel Cover of the Year. Please note that a debut novel cover is eligible in the month in which the novel is published in the US. Cover artist/illustrator/designer information is provided when we have it.

I'm using PollCode for this vote. After you the check the circle next to your favorite, click "Vote" to record your vote. If you'd like to see the real-time results click "View". This will take you to the PollCode site where you may see the results. If you want to come back to The Qwillery click "Back" and you will return to this page. Voting will end sometime on June 30, 2018, unless the vote is extended. If the vote is extended the ending date will be posted.

Vote for your favorite June 2018 Debut Cover!
 
pollcode.com free polls




Cover design by Brian Lemus
Cover image © Cultura Exclusive/Manuel Sulzer/Getty Images




Jacket design © Leo Nickolls Design
Jacket photograph © All Canada Photos/Alamy Stock Photo




Cover design by Adam Simpson








Cover design by Cameron Cornelius




Cover art by Mingchen Shen




Jacket design by Duncan Spilling LBBG
Jacket photograph © Larry Rostant




Cover design by Micaela Alcaino




Cover art by Micah Epstein




Cover design by Gregg Kulick
Cover image by Antarworks




Cover design by Mark Robinson




Cover art by Tommy Arnold




Cover art by Jan Weßbecher








Cover by Will Staehle