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The Water Crisis Chronicles from Amber Garr

Today I’m happy to welcome author Amber Garr and let you all know about The Water Crisis Chronicles and Amber’s BIG giveaway and fundraiser going on this month!

First, a little about the books. A NA/Mature YA dystopian trilogy, they are full of action, love, and survival. Set in the not so distant future, two desserters fight to save each other while learning that the truth behind the twisted science keeping them alive.

Waterproof (Book 1)

Dying of thirst is the new reality.

Five years after the last drop of clean water disappeared, global societies collapsed and nuclear war shattered all hope of recovery. In a place now only a skeleton of its former self, survivors fight to avoid capture by the government. Forced to work in factories that produce the only drinking water available, those who go in, never come out.

Zach and Vivienne have lived as deserters since they were teenagers. Fighting amongst their own and scrounging for the necessities of life, they’ve learned to rely on each other in every way. Yet when tragedy strikes and the true objectives of the government facility are revealed, their world is ripped apart. 

A fate once thought to hold their demise may be the sole answer to their survival. Who can they trust? Who can they believe?

And now a little about the fundraiser. Be sure to check it out because not only can you help support a great cause, but you can win a KINDLE FIRE HD!

 

From now until May 31st, Amber will donate 100% of the proceeds from EVERY sale of Waterfall and Waterproof (ebook AND paperback) to her month-long fundraiser for www.water.org. As The Water Crisis Chronicles is based in a dystopian society where war over clean drinking water has destroyed the world, this cause can help make sure that we don’t ever reach these extremes. You can read more about what inspired Amber to create The Water Crisis Chronicles here. In short, the world is sorely lacking in freshwater resources (drinking water), and it may be only a matter of time before we reach a pivotal point. Will we destroy the world with our wars? Maybe.  Will we ever get the upper hand on the crisis? That’s the plan.

Let’s do what we can to help save the world. Everyone can conserve water, and everyone can support the non-profit organizations really out there in the field and making a difference for millions of people who can’t go to school or get out of poverty because they must search for water all day long.

So from April 30 to May 31, each time you buy one of the books from The Water Crisis Chronicles or donate directly to the cause, you can enter to win a Kindle Fire HD. Just $0.99 (the cost of Waterfall) or $2.99 (the cost of Waterproof) can go to support a worthy cause and help bring clean drinking water to those who need it most.

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The Seedbearing Prince: Part 1 by DaVaun Sanders

Discover the fantasy world of The Seedbearing Prince…

Dayn Ro’Halan is a farmer’s son sworn to a life of plowing on his homeworld, Shard. After finding a lost artifact called a Seed, he’s thrust into an ancient conflict between voidwalkers of the hated world Thar’Kur, and Defenders from a floating fortress called the Ring. Dayn must become a Seedbearer and learn to use the Seed’s power to shape worlds before the entire World Belt is lost.

Download The Seedbearing Prince for free on Amazon.

Excerpt

Prologue

The torrent shifted again, and a thousand shards of onyx flashed to fire as Corian swept through a roiling field of ice and stone. The sheath on his worn black armor held, but would not last much longer. The stream of rock in the space between the worlds drifted slower here, and boasted several floating mountains large enough to hold a layer of air. Green ferns covered the surface of the nearest, providing plenty of cover. Corian was tempted to stop and rest, but crater wolves likely roamed in such thick foliage. The entire World Belt hung on the message he bore to the Ring, and he could rest after his task was done.

A field of red granite stretched in the space above him like the bizarre clouds of some nightmare, the individual boulders careening off each other by the hundreds. Only the hardest minerals and metals endured the endless pounding of the rock flow, and only the most foolish men would brave such a swath of torrent. They were moving the direction he needed to go, into the flow where the rock moved fastest. In the torrent, speed kills, he reminded himself. He was the best courser among the Ring’s Guardians, but the rock never cared.

Corian deftly attached a new talon to what remained of his silver wingline, then heaved it. The metal hook took hold, his wingline snapped taut, and the boulder yanked Corian into the flow. He repeated the process, each time roping a boulder moving faster, until his last guide rock pulled him along at hundreds of spans a second. A layer of white frost appeared on his armor and mask in a blink. He reeled himself in and clung to the red surface, like a flea riding a river bison in the middle of a stampeding herd. He watched every direction at once from his perch, digging his gauntlets into the crumbling surface. The boulder was actually some ancient rusted metal, not granite as he first thought. The torrent here was so thick he could barely see the stars, and it filled his ears with a distant roar.

He sped along this way for some time, until he spied a pockmarked mass of stone and iron, large as a dwarf moon. A cleft right down the middle threatened to split the entire thing in half. A tower in the northern axis had seen more than its fair share of rust, but the light strobing from it pulsed regularly, illuminating the smaller rocks orbiting around it. As a whole, the wayfinder was ugly and old, but the mass of rock was the most blessed sight Corian could imagine after a week of surviving the torrent’s attempts to grind him to powder.

His next wingline took him closer. If the wayfinder was powered as well as he suspected, he could use the array inside it to find out where he was in the torrent, and see how close the Ring lay. He might even find food and water, if peace favored him. A fellow Guardian must stop here often for such an old wayfinder to be this well preserved, he thought.

Smaller debris pelted the wayfinder’s old crust, disintegrating in flashes of light. The surface shone with hundreds of impacts, large and small. Corian chose a crater near the old tower, perhaps seventy spans deep with high walls that would offer good angles to slow himself as he approached.

As he prepared to throw out another talon, dark shapes poured from the wayfinder’s cleft. He stared for a moment, incredulous. There could be no crater wolves on a wayfinder, with no game to hunt, unless they were marooned after striking some other erratic in the torrent. No, those shapes moved with a military precision, more lethal than the deadliest pack. He could see them clearly now, massive men covered in black. “No. Not here!” Corian barely recognized his own weary voice.

The voidwalkers had seen him. A pinprick of light shone on the wayfinder’s surface, brighter than the tower’s regular strobe. He eyed it mistrustfully as he searched for a place to throw his next wingline and change his momentum. He spotted a tumbling boulder half covered with ice, moving away from the wayfinder too fast.

The light near the voidwalkers flashed. A beam of energy rushed into Corian’s path, hot as molten steel. A lifetime of coursing experience kicked in, and he curled his legs up until his knees touched his ears, rolling forward. The strange fire passed underneath him by less than a span. He could feel the heat of it through his protective layer of sheath. The beam burned past, and slammed into a rock fifty spans away. The tumbling boulder barely even slowed in its course, but the spot where the weapon struck—for there was no question that is what it was—glowed red hot at the edges. The glistening center had cooled quick as glass.

Another pinprick of light. He twisted around in the weightlessness of the void to point his feet back toward the wayfinder and make himself a smaller target. It did no good. The beam rushed straight at him, and his world turned red with pain.

An impact jarred him awake. Another. Corian opened his eyes. I’m much too cold. The voidwalker weapon had burned away his sheath. Layers of his black armor were peeling away from the metal plates like paper curled in a fire. He had been caught in a tangle of purple-rooted vines intertwined in a mile long cluster of the floating rock, what Jendini coursers called a knotted forest. The roots were nearly hard as stone in places. Dusty old bones from animals Corian did not even recognize littered the tangles. Debris from the torrent stretched around the forest in every direction, and errant stones pelted the mass of vines, which he immediately recognized. Courser’s nap, the whole forest is covered with it.

Corian reached into a compartment on his armored belt and removed his last flask of sheath. He applied the clear liquid to his ruined armor in quick, smooth motions, not leaving one inch exposed. The sheath locked together in small patches of light, and his body’s heat immediately began to warm the interior of the invisible, protective barrier. Once the sheath was gone, his armor would not prevent the smallest pebble from killing him, if one struck him moving fast enough. For the first time, Corian considered that he may not survive.

This was to be his last circuit as a Guardian for the Ring, and he held the hope that he would look into his grandchildren’s eyes back on Jendini now that his service was finished. Yet his duty hung over him, heavier than ever. In the distance he could see the world of Shard, verdant and green just beyond the torrent’s chaos. His resolve hardened.

He slipped a speechcaster into his mouth and began to speak as he worked himself free of the tangled vines. The small wafer could hold his words in secret for a few days, should things go badly here.

“I am Corian Nightsong, a Guardian of the Ring. There are Thar’Kuri warriors on the world of Nemoc. The voidwalkers have built a device that allows them to…teleport themselves at will through the Belt. They are gathering in numbers, preparing for an attack. There are captives from all over the worlds imprisoned on Nemoc. The voidwalkers have weapons unlike anything known from the Ring. They use energy and can attack over great distances. They must have been made in the age before the Breach.

If you knew where to look for this message, you must deliver it with all haste to Force Lord Adazia on the Ring. The worlds all depend on you, for I have failed them.” The admission filled Corian with bitterness, but he forced a strength he no longer felt into his words. “My sons and daughters live in Denkstone, on Jendini. Tell them…their father served well.”

One of the vines tangled around his torso began to quiver. Corian looked down, fearing a leaf, but instead he saw a voidwalker, climbing toward him. Corian was tall, but the hulking brute easily overtopped him by a head. His glistening black armor looked as if it were melted to his frame, and covered him from head to toe save two dark slits for his eyes. The vines broke like dried mud in the voidwalker’s grasp.

Corian began to climb, scrambling further into the vines. He did not bother to draw his sword, the voidwalker would overpower him in moments if they were to fight.

“So afraid of an old courser?” Corian shouted. He pulled at every vine in his path as he fled, but most of them were stiff and gray. Living vines of the courser’s nap were purple and sticky, but the true danger lay with the leaves.

The voidwalker’s gravelly voice called to Corian, cold as an orphan’s gravestone. “Come to me, degenerate.”

Corian drew his sword, and began slashing his way through the vines. They sparked as his blade struck, but gave way. He leapt through an open space nearly ten spans across. The voidwalker followed without hesitation. So strong. Corian knew the brute meant to take him alive. He could not allow that.

He landed on a solid gray swath, fleshy beneath his feet. He rolled and lunged just as the leaf stirred. A row of spikes slipped out of the edges, thick as Corian’s leg and sharp enough to cleave a horse in two. Corian barely cleared them. The voidwalker was not so lucky. His momentum carried him right into the center of the carnivorous plant, which enveloped him with a twist of blue-veined leaf. Steam issued from the folds near the plant’s edges as it fed.

More pods of the courser’s nap were coming to life, enlivened by the voidwalker’s screams. Corian avoided the leaves wherever they stirred. He climbed and lunged and dived through the vines, soon pulling himself to the edge of the knotted forest. Pure torrent lay before him, an endless landscape of chaotic rock. There was no clear flow in any direction, the individual boulders in the skyscape crashed into each other in a hundred shattering impacts. I’ll leap blind and pray that my sheath holds.

Another voidwalker tore himself out of the vines a few spans away. Peace, but look at the size of him! The voidwalker’s armor looked as chewed up as the oldest rocks of the torrent, endless dents and scratches plastered the black surface.

“I’ve enjoyed hunting you, degenerate.”

Another courser’s leaf reared up behind the voidwalker as he lumbered toward Corian. The leaf lunged and took the voidwalker up, curling round and round as the folds of leaf tightened. Corian allowed himself a moment of elation, but it was short lived. A pale hand appeared on the side of the courser’s nap, and bright green fluid poured out. The leaf whipped back and forth, emitting a piercing shriek as the voidwalker pulled it apart piece by piece from the inside. Corian needed to see no more. He leaped, and prayed the torrent would show him mercy.

For the rest of the story, download The Seedbearing Prince for free on Amazon.

Find more from DaVaun on his blog, Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.

Gethyon by Pippa Jay

Check out this adventure-filled science fiction novel from Pippa Jay: Gethyon.

Abandoned by his mother after his father’s death, Gethyon Rees feels at odds with his world and longs to travel the stars. But discovering he has the power to do so leaves him scarred for life. Worse, it alerts the Siah-dhu—a dark entity that seeks his kind for their special abilities—to his existence, and sets a bounty hunter on his tail.

When those same alien powers lead Gethyon to commit a terrible act, they also aid his escape. Marooned on the sea-world of Ulto Marinos, Gethyon and his twin sister must work off their debt to the Seagrafter captain who rescued them while Gethyon puzzles over their transportation. How has he done this? And what more is he capable of?

Before he can learn any answers, the Wardens arrive to arrest him for his crime. Can his powers save him now? And where will he end up next?

You can download Gethyon from Amazon, Barnes and Noble and Kobo.

Excerpt

“Tell me about the angels.” The plea in Gethyon’s voice forced him to put aside the issue for now. Time enough for that later.

“Not angels,” Embar said thoughtfully. “Something not of our world, perhaps.”

“Where did they come from?”

“I don’t know, exactly. They called themselves the Rion, and I assumed they were your mother’s people. They were carrying you and Callon. She was asleep, a little pink face with her red hair in curls. You were crying.” Embar gazed towards the window. “I didn’t hear any vehicle come up to the house. They were just there, at my door. The man carrying you had a long, silver staff etched with symbols. They came into the house and sat with me, and then told me my son was dead.” Embar swallowed hard, a knot of grief lodging painfully in his throat as he said the words. “He’d tried to stop a cataclysmic explosion that would have destroyed an entire planet. He managed to contain it, reduce the force of it, but it killed him.”

“And my mother?” Gethyon asked hesitantly.

“Well, they never told me and I never asked,” Embar admitted. “She must have survived the explosion because they said Solar had died before you were born. All that concerned me was Solar’s fate, not hers. And you and your sister, of course.” It had been quite a shock to learn of Solar’s death and inherit two grandchildren in the same instant.

“She might still be alive, then.”

“Perhaps.”

Gethyon’s face glowed with hope, the brightest Embar had ever seen it. The contrast to his own feelings about their mother was stark. He’d never wish ill on anyone, but he hoped they would never see her again.

“What was her name?”

“Quin.”

“Quin what?”

“I don’t know.” Embar rose, bringing any further talk to an end, tired of reliving such painful memories. He saw the barriers close in once more as the boy retreated into his private darkness. “I must finish my thesis. I have a lecture to present next week.” He gazed down at the boy, sensing his disappointment. “Gethyon, we can talk about this again another time, if you wish.”

For the first time Embar could remember, a faint smile grew on the child’s face as he stared up at his grandfather. “When?”

“After my presentation.” He patted Gethyon on the shoulder, and noted with shock the red lines that crisscrossed the boy’s arms. “You should ask Keisha to clean those for you. They must sting.”

Gethyon nodded, but remained seated on his bed as the old man left.

~ * ~

As the door closed behind his grandfather, Gethyon rose and went to the table. A large, clear octagonal crystal lay nestled in a protective bed of fabric, glittering faintly in the slivers of light that trickled beneath the edges of the black curtains. An Χ—the company emblem of the ancient Greek letter chi taken from the acronym for Crystalline Holographic Imager—was carved into one facet of the device. Gethyon traced the emblem, a rare smile touching his face. This was his one treasure, the one sure thing he had. Lifting it from its box, Gethyon clutched the CHI in his hands and activated it. A representation of the galaxy filled his room with a translucent blackness. Stars glittered and planets glowed before his eyes.

Take me away from here. He stared deep into the image, his longing to be out there burning in his chest. Take me far away.

Something within him stirred, forcing him to focus deep inside the image. Warmth flowed from his chest, through his arms and into the crystal. Suddenly, the image opened and surrounded him; the room transformed into the dark void of open space, the stars orbiting him in slow rotation, a supernova within the grasp of his free hand.

Gethyon gasped in shock and dropped the CHI device; the illusion vanished, leaving the inactive crystal gleaming at his feet. He stared at it, expecting the images to leap from the crystal again and surround him. Tentatively, he reached down for the gem and his fingers closed around it. He lifted it to his face, gazing intently into the faceted prism, turning it this way and that as if it would suddenly reveal its secret. When nothing happened, he held it at arm’s length and activated it a second time. Again, the picture rose from the CHI device and hovered above it, nothing more than a simple hologram. Not understanding the strange sensation that seemed to spill from him into the heart of the imager, he allowed it to happen again. The view expanded and enfolded him in deepest, blackest space and sparkling stars. A cloud of infinitesimal space debris drifted across his eyes like wisps of cloud, and he pushed the fingers of his free hand into it, watching as the particles dispersed around his fingers.

Marveling at the sudden magic that had brought the galaxy’s image to life, he permitted more of the energy to surge into the CHI device, forcing it when it threatened to trickle to a halt. The image expanded farther, beyond the confines of his room and out into the landscape. Something within him seemed to unlock, and glittering threads of crystal fire shot through space, a long twisting corridor stretching out to infinity. Gethyon stood gasping on the threshold, dizzy with power and exhilaration, waiting to fall into the passageway.

Sudden alarm shot through him in an icy stream; he turned, fear stinging his nerves and fiery agony pulsing in his mind. From behind him darkness deeper than space, an antithesis of light, life and warmth, billowed into his vision, swamping and consuming all before it. He tried to scream, but the sound locked in his throat, leaving him silent and helpless. He tried to release the CHI device, to banish the image and the darkness back into the gem, but a paralysis claimed him. The blackness swelled. Amorphous fingers reached for him across the millennia, seeking to claim him. Power bled from him as the darkness drained his energy, sucked the life from him.

Pain exploded in his hand to the sound of splintering, and the vision shattered. Gethyon stood frozen. Shards of the CHI device fell from a hand dripping in crimson. He screamed as the darkness swallowed him.

To follow the rest of Gethyon’s journey, visit Amazon, Barnes and Noble and Kobo.

To find more from Pippa Jay, visit her website, Facebook, Twitter and Goodreads.

The Key by Pauline Baird Jones

Today I’m excited to share Pauline B. Jones’ science fiction/action adventure romance The Key.

Excerpt

State of Rebellion by Summer Lane

Today I’m excited to feature the third volume in Summer Lane’s YA dystopian science fiction Collapse series: State of Rebellion.

Everything has changed. After a devastating ambush that left the militia group Freedom Fighters struggling to survive, Cassidy Hart has been lucky to escape with her life. Along with her Commander and former Navy SEAL Chris Young, she’s made a shocking discovery concerning the whereabouts of her father. The militias have moved further into the mountains. And the secret that is kept there will come with a price. But when the National Guard arrives, Cassidy is faced with a choice that will force her to decide between her friends and her family. Omega is getting stronger. The fight for freedom looms on the horizon. It’s all or nothing. And Cassidy has no intention of giving up.

You can download State of Rebellion from Amazon and Barnes and Noble.

You can find more from Summer on her website and Twitter.