Welcome to author Amy Lane joining us today to talk about new release “Hiding the Moon”.
Welcome Amy 🙂
Project Stargate
By Amy Lane
I know that having Ernie being a psychic is going to throw some people. I mean, I’ve got my alternative universe stories and I’ve got my contemporary stories, and never the twain shall meet, right?
And while the trope is amusing—the hard-bitten no-bullshit government assassin falling in love with the spacey psychic who feeds every cat for miles—it’s not like it could really happen, could it?
It’s not like the government would really try to train psychics or anything, or give them psychotropic drugs to see if they could predict enemy movement via remote viewing, is it?
Is it?
Oh, yes, yes it is.
Dubbed Project Stargate—but with a number of other monikers—this was an attempt by the US government to utilize a few psychics in an abandoned to look into the future and see the movement of the enemy. Given that it started in 1978 and was decommissioned in 1995, and no enemies were sighted or predicted, it is probably what the military would deem a “goatfuck” but imagine that.
It actually existed.
And I’m not sure how I saw it. Clickbait? Did I follow the YouTube videos down the rabbit hole and pop out at Project Stargate?
I have no idea where I heard about it first—but I can tell you this: the idea did not let go.
So when it was time to make Ernie the psychic a target of a government sanctioned hit, I knew exactly what it was he’d done to end up in that kill jacket.
And it wasn’t witness a crime, and it wasn’t accidentally grab the wrong microchip and it wasn’t sleep with the wrong person.
It was most definitely be recruited into a shadow company of complete morons who don’t understand what psychic ability is and what it isn’t, and who have no idea of what to do with a psychic if he ends up in their barracks wondering what in the sweet hell happened to his life.
Because seriously—what could be closer to real life, right?
Someone—I forget who—mentions Project Stargate in the course of the books, and I’m pretty sure people just sort of breezed over that line like I had pulled such a thing out of my ear and it was better just to go with it. I do the same thing when I’m watching Macgyver when he creates a jet engine out of a ballpoint pen and a lawnmower blade with donkey piss for fuel. The plot is on a roll and I’m with it for better or worse.
But I figured I should point out that in this case, Project Stargate was a real thing, so Ernie had precedent.
A batshit crazy precedent that still boggles my mind, but precedent.
Blurb: Fish Out Of Water: Book Four – A Fish Out of Water/Racing for the Sun Crossover
Can a hitman and a psychic negotiate a relationship while all hell breaks loose?
The world might not know who Lee Burton is, but it needs his black ops division and the work they do to keep it safe. Lee’s spent his life following orders—until he sees a kill jacket on Ernie Caulfield. Ernie isn’t a typical target, and something is very wrong with Burton’s chain of command.
Ernie’s life may seem adrift, but his every action helps to shelter his mind from the psychic storm raging within. When Lee Burton shows up to save him from assassins and club bunnies, Ernie seizes his hand and doesn’t look back. Burton is Ernie’s best bet in a tumultuous world, and after one day together, he’s pretty sure Lee knows Ernie is his destiny as well.
But when Burton refused Ernie’s contract, he kicked an entire piranha tank of bad guys, and Burton can’t rest until he takes down the rogue military unit that would try to kill a spacey psychic. Ernie’s in love with Burton and Burton’s confused as hell by Ernie—but Ernie’s not changing his mind and Burton can’t stay away. Psychics, assassins, and bad guys—throw them into the desert with a forbidden love affair and what could possibly go wrong?
Buy Links:
Meet the Moon
Burton yawned and looked at the clock on the dash. Seven o’clock.
It was true; he could drive straight through to Victoriana and be there in another three hours—but, maddeningly enough, Ernie was right.
Burton wanted to talk to his boss first, and it would be nice of him to offer a heads-up to the people in Victoriana. Yeah, Ace owed him a few, but Burton had been raised to be polite.
Besides, Ace would be fine with it, but Sonny always needed a little warning, and Burton didn’t want to piss Sonny off. Idly he thought back to his interactions with the laconic Ace and the highly unstable Sonny Daye and wondered if Ernie would think they were “good” or “full of bugs.”
“Good,” Ernie mumbled, turning sideways in the seat and curling up like a little kid. The Tahoe came fully loaded, and Burton hit the passenger seat adjustments to tilt the thing back and make Ernie more comfortable. “Like you,” he said happily. “I’m hungry. I usually eat at the bakery by now. Stop, get some food, find a room. Your friends will be there tomorrow morning.”
Burton snorted. Yeah, sure, a hotel room was probably a good idea—there was a Motel 6 at the next turnoff and he had cash—but he wasn’t planning to spend more than a few hours there.
The thought had no sooner crossed his mind than Ernie chuckled, like he knew something Burton didn’t.
“Goddammit!” The fine hairs on the back of Burton’s neck stood up. “Why are you laughing like that?”
He knew when the kid’s eyes opened.
“I’m a pretty good lay,” Ernie murmured. “You’re going to want to take more time than that.”
“So help me, I will wreck the car.” The idea was preposterous. Burton had urges—he knew them for what they were. But he’d never taken a man to his bed, and he certainly wasn’t going to do so now, in the middle of a failed op and the… the frickin’ mystery that was Ernie Caulfield.
“That’d be a shame,” Ernie said, sitting up and readjusting the seat. “I think I wouldn’t mind you touching me.”
Burton growled. “You’re stoned. It’s not happening.”
Ernie gurgled happily. “Nope. Wore off before….” His voice dropped. “Before the Corduroy guys thing.” He sighed. “I… I wish it lasted longer. That would… it would have been nice to be stoned when that happened.”
“Why?” Burton wanted his wits as sharp as possible when shit was going down.
“Don’t feel so much. The X or the pot takes over, and it… it muffles shit. All the bad shit—hell, even the good shit’s bad when there’s too much of it. I… I really wish it had all been muffled when the bad shit went.” He whimpered. “The club guy grabbed my dick. That… that wasn’t pleasant.”
“Not the first time it happened,” Burton wagered.
“It’s better when I want it,” Ernie said dispiritedly. “I mean, got lots I didn’t want, but some of it I wanted. I didn’t want that.”
“Why do you take it when you don’t want it?” he asked, curious. So many pictures of Ernie naked with other people. Always with the same dreamy expression, like he wasn’t really there.
“’Cause you can ride it,” Ernie said, eyes closed. “Like, ride their endorphins like you ride the drugs. Both ways suck, but one way you’re not alone. Until I found the club. That was perfect.”
A week ago Burton would have dismissed what Ernie was talking about out of hand. But Ernie had unnerved him, pretty much from the beginning, and he found himself flirting with the possibility, the outright probability of the impossible thing that Ernie was in his head.
“Maybe be somewhere without so many people?” Burton suggested. Hell, even if the kid was simply agoraphobic, the self-medication he was talking about wasn’t good for him.
“They can find me in the empty.” Ernie pulled his knees up and wrapped his arms around his shins, which spoke well of his flexibility, since he was using the seat belt. “But now they found me in the city, and I don’t know what to do.”
And then Lee Burton, once in Marine special ops, now in special division covert ops, soldier, assassin, all-around logical guy, found himself making the rashest of promises.
“I’m taking you someplace safe,” he said. “Someplace not even my boss knows about. You tell me why people are after you, and I’ll find a way to make it stop. I swear.”
Ernie looked at him sideways from his big brown eyes. “Why would you do that? We haven’t even rented the hotel room yet.” He stared back out into the desert moodily. “Everybody wants sex first.”
“Kid, I’m not in it for sex—”
Ernie snorted derisively.
“I was supposed to kill you, you understand? I am a finely trained killing machine—I’m great at it. But I don’t kill club bunnies or witchy little bakers or kids who feed all the stray cats in downtown Albuquerque. I kill bad men—and somebody put you on my list, and on Corduroy’s list, and for all I know on the CIA’s list, and Jesus, you probably have a fucking SEAL team hunting down your scrawny ass, and I want to know why! My boss didn’t like this op and I don’t like it, and I’m going to find out who tried to make me a murderer.”
“But aren’t you—”
“Like you said, kid. It matters if I want it. I kill bad men who like to kill innocent people. I don’t kill innocent people who are hunted by bad men.”
Ernie hmmed, appearing to be thinking very carefully. “You still want me,” he breathed. “This is your exit. There’s a donut shop down past the motel. Let’s go there first.”
Burton hesitated to ask, because like this kid would know, right?
“They have crullers,” Ernie murmured, looking sublimely happy.
“How do you do that?” Burton asked bluntly. He’d been all ready to go for the donut question, but seriously, how did this kid keep reading his mind?
“I’m not usually so good at it,” Ernie said, looking down at his tennis shoes on Burton’s upholstery and picking at the stitching. “But your mind is very clear. I think it’s because of that assassin thing. You need to be totally focused. So it’s like reading something etched in stone. But most people aren’t like that. I just get fuzzy sorts of auras. I… I wish I’d learned how to tamp down on it when I had the chance.”
“You had the chance to learn how to use this… this thing in your head?” Burton wasn’t sure how he was going to tell Jason Constance that their target was psychic, and that was probably why he was the target—but he was really interested in why that made someone want him dead.
“Yeah.” Ernie sighed again, like this was the heaviest concept on the planet. “But they didn’t want me to make it stop or quiet it down. They just wanted me to tell them who was good and who was bad.”
This was interesting.
“What did they do then?”
Ernie’s face fell. “They hurt the good people to see if it would make them bad. And sometimes it would.”
Burton sucked in air. It sounded like something illegal. It sounded like behavior modification—of the most monstrous type.
It sounded like a reason to kill a dreamy kid who just wanted to get stoned enough to stay in his own head. “Donuts,” he said grimly. “You and me need some sugar before I call my boss, and then we need to talk about what’s next.”
“Okay, Cruller.” The kid closed his eyes happily. “You can ask me anything you want after donuts. But maybe make sure we get a king-sized bed for that other thing—”
“Ain’t happening.”
Ernie’s laughter tinkled, low and charming, and Burton wondered exactly what sort of pictures he was painting in the kid’s mind.
It would be nice if Burton knew himself, wouldn’t it!
Amy Lane lives in a crumbling crapmansion with a couple of growing children, a passel of furbabies, and a bemused spouse. She’s been nominated for a RITA, has won honorable mention for an Indiefab, and has a couple of Rainbow Awards to her name. She also has too damned much yarn, a penchant for action-adventure movies, and a need to know that somewhere in all the pain is a story of Wuv, Twu Wuv, which she continues to believe in to this day! She writes fantasy, urban fantasy, and gay romance–and if you accidentally make eye contact, she’ll bore you to tears with why those three genres go together. She’ll also tell you that sacrifices, large and small, are worth the urge to write.