Love Bytes says hello and welcome to author Alex Powell 🙂

Hello everyone, and welcome back to the mini blog hop! Today we’re here at Love Bytes, thank you for hosting us!

Today we’re going to discuss the theme of hacking. If you’ve been following along on the blog hop, then you know that Fox, our intrepid main character, is a hacker who uncovers government secrets and then releases them to the public. Our sometimes-antagonist Seven is also a hacker, although he is one of the agents of an unknown government.

The leader of the group of hackers that Fox is a part of, King, has lost all of his memories. The other hackers and Fox have to uncover King’s memories as part of a quest, with clues to uncover where the memories are.

Fox has a good knack of breaking in and breaking out of different spaces in the Cerebrum. His specialty is getting through Mindwalls. However, although one can fight in the Cerebrum, Fox is not skilled at that. Seven, on the other hand, is very good at fighting in the Cerebrum. He is also good at something called mind-splitting, which means that he can split his mind between the public and private domains. This becomes important later in the novel.

One of the other themes I’d like to look at is that of enemies to lovers. It’s one of my personal favourite tropes in fiction, and I use it in a lot of my other writing. Fox and Seven start out as adversaries in the struggle to recover King’s memories and to rescue him from the clutches of the unknown government. How can Seven go from being one of their agents to being something more? You’ll have to read to find out!

Meanwhile, have an excerpt in which Seven has managed to hack into Fox’s head:

Fox didn’t want this intruder wandering about unsupervised in his head, so he changed into a hawk to follow him from overhead. There was nothing he could do but try to compel the agent to leave. Fox concentrated on forcing him out of his head, but a wave of pain crashed into his temples at the attempt. The chase must have weakened him more than he first thought.

The oppressive heat and harsh sunlight weren’t real, but the pain fuelling them in his imagination was. The agent set off at a swift pace but soon slowed to a steady slog. The sand kept shifting, giving the man uneven footing. The agent finally sat down on top of a dune and surveyed the endless desert.

“You don’t have an oasis somewhere?” the agent asked at length.

“I’ve never needed an oasis.”

“That you can even imagine such an unforgiving wasteland is unbelievable.”

Fox didn’t understand. His head wasn’t like this all the time. He’d planned to use such a repellent landscape only if someone else was in his head uninvited. Fox had several other ideas in case this one hadn’t worked. He had beautiful places that he could go in his head, and yet it appeared this agent was sorry for what he was seeing.

The agent didn’t say anything more, but shaded his head with his hands. The intensity of the sunlight made it hard to see anything distant, but if the agent walked far enough, eventually he’d reach the pyramids of Giza.The agent didn’t get up again. Instead, he wavered in a jerky motion and fell over sideways, only just catching himself before hitting the sand. He slumped forward, clearly unconscious, not even putting up his hands to keep his face out of the grainy dust.

Fox landed next to him and shimmered back into human form.

Thanks for stopping by, and don’t forget to check out the last stop on the blog hop at Prism Book Alliance!

Book blurb:

Fox is a mindnet hacker, and works for the mysterious man known only as King. He spends his time uncovering dangerous secrets and releasing them to the public.

But those who cause trouble are bound to attract it, and despite their precautions King is taken prisoner by an unknown government. And if Fox is going to save him, he’s going to need help—help that comes from the very last place he expected to find it.

Alex Powell is an avid writer and reader of sci-fi and fantasy, but on occasion branches into other genres to keep things interesting. Alex is a genderqueer writer from the wilds of northern Canada who loves exploring other peoples and cultures. Alex is a recent graduate of UNBC with a BA in English, and as a result has an unhealthy obsession with Victorian Gothic literature. Alex has been writing from an early age, but is happy to keep learning to improve on their writing skills. Feedback and comments as well as any questions are appreciated! You can reach Alex at aa.powell.author@gmail.com and at their website alexpowellauthor.com.

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