Love Bytes welcomes Kelly Jensen to their blog to talk about new release “To See the Sun”.

Welcome Kelly 🙂

Choosing Love

Over the course of this tour for the release of To See the Sun, you’ll find posts about why I chose to write a mail-order-groom story and why I chose to set it in space. What I haven’t talked about yet is why I chose Abraham Bauer and Gael Sonnen to be my sun-blessed couple.

My novels tend to be character driven. For me, it’s all about their journey, meaning that my plot usually stems from their goals, and the motivation to reach them. Every now and then I’ll think of a plot first, such as: what would happen if a mystery novelist suffering from writer’s block adopted a cat and found out the cat was actually a shape shifter? I’m talking about my novella Best in Show. Even in this instance, though, Julian’s personal character arc tied into my plot. He needed a story to revitalize his career and so I gave him one—and then told him he couldn’t tell it.

But I’m here to talk about To See the Sun, my mail-order-groom science fiction western. Oh how I love writing books that don’t fit neatly into just one or two categories! For this story I needed two guys to match up and I started with Gael. His quick character sketch read something like: accepts a mail-order-groom contract under false pretenses.

And so the first wrinkle showed up to complicate my plot.

For Abraham, I started with: lonely farmer who wants to start a family. His plot wrinkle didn’t show up until halfway through the book.

For Abraham Bauer, choosing a spouse from a catalog makes perfect sense. He’s a practical guy—a miner for thirty years and now a colonist and farmer. He’s probably always ordered life’s essentials through the company store. I seriously can’t imagine Bram ever wandering a marketplace squeezing produce or fingering material. He’d rather scroll down a screen and enlarge the specifications so he can measure a product against his requirements.

Romance lurks beneath his practical skin, however. Firstly, he’s a poet…and it’d take a poet to see the beauty of Alkirak. It’s not that great a planet. But Bram has explored to the bottom of the crevasses and beneath the rock. He knows all the colors of a sunrise. He’s patient and he’s a good listener. He also believes that love starts with friendship and that friendship starts with getting to know a person. So he’s ready to invest the money to bring someone out to his corner of the galaxy, and the time it might take to get to know them, because that’s how life is supposed to work.

For his plot wrinkle, you’ll have to read the book. 😉

Gael understands love, but has no concept of romance. He travels to Alkirak to do a job—he’s fully committed to being an appropriate partner to Bram. Life hasn’t been kind to Gael, though, so his definition of partner is a little different. He basically expects he’ll have to sleep with this nice guy who has saved him from a fate literally worse than death… and he’s okay with that. He’ll cook for Bram, clean for him, help him run the farm, and keep his bed warm. But love? No one but his brother has ever required that of him and his brother is dead.

There are more wrinkles, of course, one in particular who inserted herself into the story without my say so, but the one I didn’t expect was the one that made this romance a story I not only enjoyed writing, but one of my favorite books: the fact that Gael had to learn how to love. How to give it freely and accept it in return. How to choose it. And that’s why he was perfect for this book, and for my patient and poetic farmer.

About To See the Sun

Survival is hard enough in the outer colonies—what chance does love have?

Life can be harsh and lonely in the outer colonies, but miner-turned-farmer Abraham Bauer is living his dream, cultivating crops that will one day turn the unforgiving world of Alkirak into paradise. He wants more, though. A companion—someone quiet like him. Someone to share his days, his bed, and his heart.

Gael Sonnen has never seen the sky, let alone the sun. He’s spent his whole life locked in the undercity beneath Zhemosen, running from one desperate situation to another. For a chance to get out, he’ll do just about anything—even travel to the far end of the galaxy as a mail-order husband. But no plan of Gael’s has ever gone smoothly, and his new start on Alkirak is no exception. Things go wrong from the moment he steps off the shuttle.

Although Gael arrives with unexpected complications, Abraham is prepared to make their relationship work—until Gael’s past catches up with them, threatening Abraham’s livelihood, the freedom Gael gave everything for, and the love neither man ever hoped to find.

Riptide Publishing

Amazon

About Kelly Jensen

If aliens ever do land on Earth, Kelly will not be prepared, despite having read over a hundred stories about the apocalypse. Still, she will pack her precious books into a box and carry them with her as she strives to survive. It’s what bibliophiles do.

Kelly is the author of a number of novels, novellas, and short stories, including the Chaos Station series, cowritten with Jenn Burke. Some of what she writes is speculative in nature, but mostly it’s just about a guy losing his socks and/or burning dinner. Because life isn’t all conquering aliens and mountain peaks. Sometimes finding a happy ever after is all the adventure we need.

Connect with Kelly:

• Website: kellyjensenwrites.com
• Facebook: www.facebook.com/kellyjensenwrites/
• Twitter: twitter.com/kmkjensen
• Tumblr: kmkjensen.tumblr.com/
• Pinterest: www.pinterest.com/kmkjensen/
• Instagram: www.instagram.com/kellyjensenwrites/

To celebrate the release of To See the Sun, Kelly is giving away a $25 Riptide credit and some swag stickers and a bracelet! Leave a comment with your contact info to enter the contest. Entries close at midnight, Eastern time, on August 18, 2018. Contest is NOT restricted to U.S. entries. Thanks for following along, and don’t forget to leave your contact info!