Tara Maya
Author Archives: Tara Maya
Tara Maya
- by Tara Maya
Cover Reveal for Space Jockey
In the future, we will need to travel. We will need to fight. We will need to deliver food to the famished. We will need to go to other planets in tacky tourist shirts and take pictures with our embedded borg eyes. We will need to do all these important things in spaceships. And those spaceships will need pilots. Not just any pilots, either, but the best of the best.
Space jockeys!
Or maybe not. In which case, the alternative might be just as interesting.
These tales aren’t really about spaceships, but about people: The starship pilots, space navy aces, and explorers of the future. Where they go, how they get there, and what price they pay.
As you can see, we have some AWESOME contributors. About half the stories have been printed before (including two classics that I bet you haven’t read, but totally should). Half the stories are brand new.
I’m thrilled, to say the least, to have been honored by some top-selling authors with their stories. I’m equally proud to say this will be the first publication for a couple of these authors… but I doubt it will be the last.
I wanted to feature a mix of established and up-and-coming authors, because I think the short story format is still hugely important in the field of science fiction.
In the upcoming weeks, look for some interviews with the contributing authors, excerpts from their other published works, and teasers from the anthology.
Also, if you want to review this anthology (free copy!) or buy it for just $0.99 as soon as it comes out (that price will go up the next day!) drop me a note … tara @ taramayastales (dot) com … or sign up Tara’s Tribe to receive the monthly newsletter, where it will be announced first.
- by Tara Maya
The Carnelian Legacy by Cheryl Koevoet
Marisa MacCallum always believed that the man of her dreams was out there somewhere. The problem is—he’s in another dimension.
After the death of her father, eighteen-year-old Marisa’s life is on the verge of imploding. She seeks comfort on her daily ride through the woods of Gold Hill, but when a mysterious lightning storm strikes, she is hurled into the ancient, alternate dimension of Carnelia where she is discovered by the arrogant but attractive nobleman, Ambassador Darian Fiore.
Stranded in a world teeming with monsters, maniacs and medieval knights, Marisa is forced to join Darian on a dangerous mission to negotiate peace with his archenemy, Savino da Roca. Along the way, she sees his softer side and quickly falls in love. But when she learns that Darian is locked into an arranged marriage, her heart shatters.
When Darian’s cousin Savino falls for her charms and demands her hand in exchange for peace, Marisa is faced with an impossible choice: marry the enemy of the man she loves or betray them both and become the catalyst for a bloody war.
For more from Cheryl Koevoet, visit her website, Twitter and Facebook.
- by Tara Maya
5. A Purple Pixie Pesters Cousin Hadi
The Unfinished Song: Initiate
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| “Purple Faery” by Arwen Robertson |
Dindi
… the laces to his legwals. While Dindi tried to guess what the fae was up to, the pixie untied two pairs of laces on either of Hadi’s legs, then retied the wrong strings together. Meanwhile, another pixie buzzed around his ear to distract him. Though Hadi couldn’t see the fae, and couldn’t make out the words, he could hear the hum of pixie voices.
“You little fiends!” Hadi waved his spear. “I know you’re here somewhere! I’ll get you!”
“Hadi, don’t…!”
When Hadi tried to lunge, he tripped because his calves were tied together. He fell face first into the moist soil.
“You mucky faeries!” He pounded the mud where he’d fallen. The pixies cheered and jumped up and down on his back while congratulating each other on their victory over the foe.
Puddlepaws pounced on the pixie. Very proud of himself, he held the pixie by the back of its little tunic and brought it to Dindi.
“Bad kitty! Bad kitty!” cried the pixie.
Dindi scooped up the kitten, freed the pixie, and shouted back over her shoulder, as she took off down the row of maize, “I’ll just go on ahead.”
“Dindi! You are not to leave my sight!” He squirmed in the mud but only managed to dig himself into a shallow trench. “Dindi! Dindi, get back here this instant! I’m in charge of you!”
She just laughed. The empty basket bounced on her back as she ran. The fae followed Dindi in a cloud.
“Come dance with us! Come dance with us!” they urged in a babble of flute voices.
“I can’t this afternoon, friends,” Dindi apologized. “I have to gather soap roots, tallow and ash to make soap and pick and juice blueberries, all by middle meal.”
A purple pixie fragile as a butterfly, landed on Dindi’s shoulder. She twined her tiny lavender hands in Dindi’s black hair.
“Chores are boring, Dindi,” she said. “That’s why they call them chores.” “Don’t let those humans tire you out, Dindi,” chided a green pixie. He landed on Dindi’s other shoulder. A red shoved him off and claimed the shoulder for his own. That enraged the purple, who raced over Dindi’s nose to attack the red pixie. All this activity excited Puddlepaws, who squirmed in Dindi’s arms. She kept her grip firm on the furry pixie-hunting predator.
“Do you mind?” Dindi said. “It’s very difficult to walk when you’re using me as a battleground.”
“Then come dance with us!”
“Yes, yes!” agreed a yellow dandelion sprite. He parted the corn stalks to skip at Dindi’s feet. “You dance with us and in exchange, we’ll do your chores for you.”
“Mm. Just like you milked the bull for me and winnowed the sugar out of the gravel for me, and wove a sitting mat I was to give to Uncle Lubo out of prickly pear thorns?”
“Friends,” the green pixie said to the others, “anyone would think she wasn’t grateful for all our help.”
“Impossible.” The purple one…
TO BE CONTINUED
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- by Tara Maya
4. Puddlepaws
(Start at the Beginning of the Novel)
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| “Contement – Siamese Kitten,” L.A. Berry |
Dindi
…formed a circle and shoved Dindi back and forth, finally pushing her into the dust. They laughed and flounced away.
The dust tasted like dung. They were right. No one from Lost Swan Clan had ever passed the test given during the year children disappeared for Initiation rites. She could be taken for Initiation any day now, Dindi thought. And all omens indicated she’d fail miserably. Like her mother. And her grandmother. And every single person in her whole clan since the days of the Lost Swan Clan’s great-mother.
Her basket had fallen. A tiny meow and skritching came from inside. She pulled her kitten out of the basket. His fur stood on end and he looked outraged. She’d rescued the kitten from a grolwuf, a cat-eating goblin, who had already devoured mama cat and the other kits. The little thing had been snow white, eyes sticky shut, but since then his ears, nose, paws and tail had darkened to black, as if he’d pranced in mud, so she’d named him Puddlepaws. She petted and kissed him until his fur settled and he purred to let her know the upset basket was forgiven.
The purring kitten on her shoulder and the beauty of the day rinsed away her gloom on the walk home. Rolling green hills stretched out in every direction under a perfect blue sky marked only with the V of migrating swans. Everything smelled fresh. The corn was shoulder high, while inside the pale green husks, the kernels flushed deeper gold with each passing day. Innumerable clouds of tiny willawisps hazed the fields like sparkling mists. Maize sprites clambered nimbly to the tips of the straight-backed stalks to wave at Dindi when she brushed by them. Pixies of every color fluttered on luminous wings around her head, making her dizzy. Puddlepaws batted at them.
“Wait up, Dindi,” called her cousin, Hadi, puffing behind her. “Aunt Sullana asked me to find you.”
He posed with his spear, in an attempt to look stern. Unseen by Hadi, a pixie banged the butt of Hadi’s dangling spear on his knee.
“Ow.” He dropped the spear and hopped about on one foot. He glowered suspiciously at his spear when he picked it up, and then at Dindi. “There aren’t any fae around, are there?”
“Hardly any,” Dindi assured him.
The pixies laughed as he plowed right past them without seeing them. Most people could not see the fae. Kittens could. Puddlepaws leaped from her shoulder, trying to catch a pixie, missed, of course, and flipped in the air before landing in the dirt.
“I’m not a wayward goat,” said Dindi. “I don’t need herding.”
“I’m older than you and I’m the closest you have to a brother, so yes, I am your keeper,” he said, brandishing his spear. “Once I pass Initiation, and I am a Man, my duty will be to protect your honor from all who threaten it—”
The mischievous purple pixie crouched at his feet, fiddling with…
TO BE CONTINUED
Download the complete book for FREE or buy it on Amazon as an ebook
- by Tara Maya
Excerpt: Graceling by Kristin Cashore
She caught the fall of every leaf in the garden, the rustle of every branch. And so she was astonished when a man stepped out of the darkness and grabbed her from behind. He wrapped his arm around her chest and held a knife to her throat. He started to speak, but in an instant she had deadened his arm, wrenched the knife from his hand, and thrown the blade to the ground. She flung him forward, over her shoulders.
He landed on his feet.
Her mind raced. He was Graced, a fighter. That much was clear. And unless he had no feeling in the hand that had raked her chest, he knew she was a woman.
He turned to face her. They eyed each other, warily, each no more than a shadow of the other. He spoke.
“I’ve heard a lady with this particular Grace.” His voice was gravelly and deep. There was lilt to his words; it was not an accent she knew. She must learn who he was, so that she could know what to do with him.
“I can’t think what that lady would be doing so far from home, running around the courtyard of King Murgon at midnight,” he said. He shifted slightly, placed himself between her and wall. He was taller than she was, and smooth in his movements, like a cat. Deceptively calm, ready to spring. A torch on the path nearby caught the glimmer of a small gold hoops in his ears. And his face was unbearded, like a Lienid.
She shifted and swayed, her body ready, like his. She didn’t have much time to decide. He knew who was she was. But if he was a Lienid, she didn’t want to kill him.
“Don’t you have anything, Lady? Surely you don’t think I’ll let you pass without an explanation?” There was something playful in his voice. She watched him, quietly. He stretched his arms in one flid motion, and her eyes unraveled the bands of gold that gleamed on his fingers.
“You’re a Lienid,” she said.
“You have good eyesight,” he said.
“Not good enough to see the color of your eyes.”
He laughed. “I think I know the color of yours.”
Common sense told her to kill him. “You’re one to speak of being far from home,” she said. “What’s a Lienid doing in the court of King Murgon?”
“I’ll tell you my reasons if you’ll tell me yours.”
“I’ll tell you nothing, and you must let me pass.”
“Must I?”
“If you don’t, I’ll have to force you.”
“Do you think you can?”
She faked to her right, and he swung away, easily. She did it again, faster. Again, he escaped her easily. He was very good. But she was Katsa.
Also, please visit today’s Mystery Sponsor (don’t lose your head over it or anything)…
- by Tara Maya
Why Are There Mysterious Things On My Blog?
Ok, I realize I started posting excerpts from Initiate on my blog without letting you know what I was up too, and maybe that was overly mysterious. You might be saying, “Hey, Tara, I’ve already Initiate. Duh! In fact, I just re-read it last night, for like the seventeenth time, because that’s how much I love it. What gives?”
Well, I know YOU have read Initiate, because you’re awesome like that.
But maybe you have some friends on Twitter or Facebook who haven’t? So I decided to post the ENTIRE NOVEL up on my blog, 500 words a day, and let your friends read the excerpts, or even the whole novel, if they like, here on my blog. If you’ve already enjoyed the novel, could you do me a huge favor and share it? Because if you do, pixies will bring you flowers. That’s what the pixies claimed, at least….
Now, other news.
I’ve been working on an anthology of science fiction stories all summer and I have been blessed to find some GREAT stories. Look out, because later this week, we are going to have the Cover Reveal!