Time is running out.
After saving the world twice, Xander, Jameson and friends plunge headlong into a new crisis. The ithani–the aliens who broke the world–have reawakened from their hundred millennia-long slumber. When Xander and Jameson disappear in a flash, an already fractured world is thrown into chaos.
The ithani plans, laid a hundred thousand years before, are finally coming to pass, and they threaten all life on Erro. Venin and Alix go on a desperate search for their missing and find more than they bargained for. And Quince, Robin and Jessa discover a secret as old as the skythane themselves.
Will alien technology, unexpected help from the distant past, destiny and some good old-fashioned firepower be enough to defeat an enemy with the power to split a world? The final battle of the epic science fiction adventure that began in Skythane will decide the fate of lander and skythane alike. And in the north, the ithani rise…
Ithani Buy Links
Book 1: Skythane:
Book Two: Lander:
Scott is giving away a $50 Amazon gift card and ten copies of “The Stark Divide,” the first book in his other trilogy, his other trilogy, “Liminal Sky,” with this tour. Enter via Rafflecopter:
Quince stood at the edge of the Argent Sea, her bare feet in the sand. The waves crashed on the black rocks, cool over the tops of her feet, and the air was heavy with salt. She recalled that day twenty-five years before when she’d left here with Jameson and Xander, taking them away to a world wholly unlike their own.
So much had changed in the intervening years, including the aging of her poor bones.
Overhead, a flock of imprean soared on the ocean breeze, calling out their particular carucaahh, carucaahh sound as they searched the water below for prey.
Quince was sore from the activities of the last few days—last few weeks, actually. She wanted nothing more than to slip away somewhere with Robyn, to find somewhere private where they could get reacquainted and leave all responsibility behind, but more was demanded of her. Of all of them.
Most of all, she dreaded the conversation that was to come.
She had done what she thought was right. That was the fuckall hardest part. She’d had a world to save, and the nimfeach had told her it was imperative that Jameson and Xander be bonded. They had to get over their antipathy for each other, and the way they’d been at each other’s throats the first few days—she’d had no choice.
But what if I did? What if they would have come around to it on their own, without her intervention? Without dosing them with pith? It was funny, when she thought about it. Here they were at the end of the world, and she was freaked out about the boys’ feelings.
She snorted. As her mother had often said, you can’t undo done.
Now she just had to figure out how to pick up the pieces and move on.
“You look troubled.”
Quince turned to find Robyn standing there, her black wings tucked neatly behind her, holding out a chunk of bread and some cheese.
“A little.” She sighed and then smiled gamely. “Just worrying about the boys.”
Robyn nodded. “The boys? Or how angry they are at you?”
Robyn still knew her so well. “A little of both.”
They stood side by side, staring out at the water, the waves lapping at the sandy shore. From here, everything looked normal, as if Erro wasn’t on the cusp of monumental, devastating change.
“Would you rather the world be destroyed to avoid a few hurt feelings?”
Quince looked at Robyn, calm and beautiful as the breeze rustled through her raven black hair. “Of course not.” She took a bite of the bread. It was a bit hard, but she was starving. The cheese was better, a sharp white corybryte, if she didn’t miss the mark. “They seem to have gotten past it.”
If she had her way, they’d all move past it, at least until the crisis ended. Then she could take her lumps.
She’d seen the hurt in Xander’s eyes, and in Jameson’s. Maybe it would be better to have this out between them before they moved on.
“You’re not alone in this.” Robyn slipped her arm around Quince and embraced her. She was warm, alive. Real.
“I dreamed about this for so long.” Quince buried her face in Robyn’s neck. For just a moment, she was content.
Robyn squeezed her tight, slipping her hand through Quince’s hair.
“I need a bath.”
“I don’t care about that.” Robyn held her out at arm’s length, searching her face. “You all right?”
Quince nodded, wiping her eyes. “I will be.”
“I know.” She looked over her shoulder at the broken city. “We should go. They’ll be waiting for us.”
“Yes.” Quince didn’t know if she was up to the tasks that lay before her.
She supposed she had no choice.
Scott lives with his husband of twenty five years in a Sacramento suburb, in a cute little yellow house with a brick fireplace and two pink flamingoes out front.
He inhabits in the space between the here and now and the what could be. Indoctrinated into science fiction and fantasy by his mom at the tender age of nine, he quickly finished her entire library. But he soon began to wonder where all the queer people were.
After coming out at twenty three, he started writing the kinds of stories he couldn’t find at Crown Books. If there weren’t many queer characters in his favorite genres, he would will them into existence, subverting them to his own ends. And if he was lucky enough, someone else would want to read them.
His friends say Scott’s mind works a little differently than most – he makes connections between ideas that others don’t, and somehow does more in a day than most people manage in a week. Although born an introvert, he forced himself to reach outside himself, and learned to connect with others like him.
Scott’s stories subvert expectations that transform traditional science fiction, fantasy, and contemporary worlds into something different and unexpected. He runs both Queer Sci Fi and QueeRomance Ink with his husband Mark.
His romance and genre fiction writing brings a queer energy to his stories, filling them with love, beauty and power. He imagines how the world could be – in the process, he hopes to change the world, just a little.
Scott was recognized as one of the top new gay authors in the 2017 Rainbow Awards, and his debut novel “Skythane” received two awards and an honorable mention.
You can find him at Dreamspinner here, Goodreads here, on Amazon here, on QueeRomance Ink here, and on Facebook here.
