Tag Archives: SciFi

Federico Duomo is dead, to begin with. But this is only the first bit of Shax’s problems resolved. Powerful crime lords and an obscenely wealthy oligarch are still determined to destroy him and his crew, and Fluffy’s original owner may be coming after the Brimstone now, too. It would be splendid to be able to take on one thing at a time.

Adding to the external conflicts, life on board the Brimstone has only grown increasingly stranger. Shax has no idea what to do with the seven partly human children that Heckle rescued from slavers. Heckle himself has grown short-tempered, even with Mac. Someone from Julian’s past catches up to them on Barbary. It’s enough to put a demon off his cinnamon buns.

Shax isn’t panicking, though. In fact, he’s had it up to his handsome royal nose with the people he loves having to live in constant fear. The fox has turned at bay and the Brimstone’s enemies are in for a shock. The demon prince of thieves is coming for them.

Warnings: Some violence and one group of very creepy hell denizens

Series Blurb

Due to circumstances completely within his control, Shax, the Demon Prince of Thieves, has fled, er, emigrated from Earth to seek his fortunes out in the galaxy. Who said Science Fiction always has to be serious?

1- Potato Surprise

2 – Hell for the Company

3 – Fear of Frogs

4 – Shax’s War

5 – Beside a Black Tarn

6 – The Hunt for Red Fluffy

Excerpt

Chapter One

“Captain Cream Puff, Glkix is on the line for you.” Ms. Ivana kept her voice to a throaty purr, probably in deference to the early hour.

While Shax had been expecting the call, he would’ve preferred at least one more cup of coffee beforehand. “Thank you, my dear. Put her through to my comm, please.”

He arranged himself in his desk chair to appear calm and unaffected, coffee mug in one hand for any necessary sardonic or thoughtful sipping. A brief flicker through the relays, and Glkix’s image hovered above the holo plate on his desk. Her blue-black hair swept up and pinned with obsidian, her gray-green face smooth and serene, his mother’s personal assistant was as elegant as ever. Few people would have picked up the tightness around her eyes, and only if they’d known her as long as Shax had. Not good news, then.

“Good morning, highness. Your royal mother sends greetings.”

“Thank you, Glkix. Please convey my filial greetings in return.” Shax’s nerves got the better of him. He sipped. “You have something for me?”

Incomprehensible data flowed across the screen as Glkix typed. “We were able to track her genetic material through registered bloodlines and make discreet inquiries regarding missing stock. Her lineage is well-documented and highly prized among certain demon lords, highness.”

Is this flattery or an explanation of methodology? Sometimes it’s so hard to tell. “Yes? Do you have an answer, or is this just an update on progress?”

Glkix cleared her throat, eyes glued to the data stream. “An answer, highness. Your hellcat belongs to Baphomet, Lord of Beasts.”

Hell’s shiny, pointy gates. Inside, Shax ran in little circles screaming. Outwardly, he sipped. “I see. Does he know I have her?”

“Abject apologies, highness. I’ve little data on that.” Glkix ducked in a strange sort of seated bow. “We know that Lord Baphomet was visiting a forested moon near Opal when the hellcat in question—”

“Fluffy.”

“Pardon, highness?”

Though he knew she’d never approved of his names for his pets, he persisted. “My hellcat’s name is Fluffy.”

Glkix cringed. “Er. Yes. When Fluffy was stolen from her pride.”

“Do we know by whom?”

“No, highness. Not yet.”

Shax drummed his fingers on his mug and forced himself not to sip. Control. Control. “And m’lord of beasts? Where is he now?”

“Hunting, highness. In his ship, Cornuta.” Glkix shook her head. “We are trying to redirect wherever possible, Prince Shax.”

“Understood.” All too well. “Thank you for the information. Mother can’t possibly be paying you enough.”

“I live to serve, highness.” She executed her seated bow again, and Shax cut the connection.

Carefully, he placed his mug on the desk. Pushed back his chair. Bent over his knees and screamed into his hands for a solid forty-five seconds.

Of course, he should have known better. Boots pounded down the corridor almost before he’d stopped, and his door whooshed open. Through his fingers, he spotted Ness in the doorway with his wings mantled in a fierce defensive position and his plasma pistol drawn. Julian, knives out, slid in under Ness’s wing and dove behind the trunk Shax had pulled from the closet earlier.

“Shax? Everything all right?” Ness ventured after a stunned and puzzled silence.

Julian vaulted the trunk to sit on its lid. “We thought something was murdering you.”

“No murders.” Shax sat up and forced himself to draw in a slow breath. “Not yet, at any rate.”

Instead of acknowledging him, Ness turned to Julian. “I don’t think it was an angry scream.”

“Right.” Julian nodded. “No prince-in-a-snit smoke. I’d say frustration, except there was definitely a squeaky note to it.”

“You’re both vastly entertaining and should consider taking this on the road.” Shax scowled at each in turn. “But this is serious.”

Ness flipped and reflipped his wings as he folded them before sitting on the bunk. “Perhaps you could enlighten us, love.”

“Fluffy…” Shax paused as the hellcat in question trotted through the open door to butt her head against him almost hard enough to knock him from his chair. “Yes, you’re a good girl. Who’s the best Fluffums? Ahem. Fluffy was stolen from Baphomet.”

“I’m gathering that’s not good.” Ness let her waving tail run through his hand, careful of the sickle blade on the end, his expression unreadable.

“ISE lists Lord Baphomet as a class IV demon lord. Not of the highest rank, so he’s able to leave Sol system,” Julian offered softly. “Unpredictable, motivations unclear; do not, under any circumstances, engage.”

“While Enforcement and I disagree on many things, that’s a frighteningly apt assessment.” Mug back in hand, Shax took a fortifying sip. “He may be hunting us and, I’ll be honest, this is definitely cause for alarm. Mum and Glkix have apparently been sending him off in various directions, but he will find us at some point.”

The crinkle in Ness’s forehead showed the first sign of real concern. “Is he family? Do you know him well?”

Shax waved a hand at the universe. “All demon lords are family in a sense. I don’t believe we’re directly related, mind you. And Mum would never allow association with the more, ah, nature-oriented demons. Mud and dust and sticks in your hair…”

“That’s a no, then,” Julian drawled. “This may sound absurd to you, our lovely prince, but could you contact him? Let him know what happened?”

A cold iron weight lodged in Shax’s stomach and the backs of his eyes burned as he choked out, “But he’ll want Fluffy back.”

Everyone lunged toward him with huffs and other distressed sounds, and he found himself surrounded by arms and wings, with a huge hellcat head in his lap.

“Shax. I’m so sorry,” Julian whispered. “Please don’t cry.”

“I most certainly am not.” Of course, a hot teardrop chose that moment to splash onto Julian’s hand.

Ness stroked his hair. “We know you love her. But she had a pride once, didn’t she? Maybe a family?”

“Of course.” Shax shook himself and swiped at his eyes. Part of him wanted to collapse against them and howl like a six-year-old demon, but he was the captain, and there was such a thing as dignity. “Of course. And better to inform him than to have him come after us in a rage. I’ll… send the message.”

About The Author

Angel Martinez is the pen name of a writer of several genres who writes both kinds of queer fiction – Science Fiction and Fantasy. (What? There are others?) Currently living part time in the hectic sprawl of northern Delaware, (and full time inside the author’s head).

Angel has one husband, one son, at least one cat at any given time, a changing variety of other furred and scaled companions, a love of all things beautiful and a terrible addiction to the consumption of both knowledge and chocolate.

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Release Blitz: Facets of the Nether by William C. Tracy

Posted on June 24, 2020 by Mirrigold

Facets of the Nether | William C. Tracy

The Dissolution Cycle #2

Publisher: Space Wizard Science Fantasy

Release Date: Tuesday, June 23 2020

Length: 118,000

Buy Link: Amazon

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Blurb

The Dissolution approaches.

Sam has saved the Assembly of Species, but at a terrible cost. Locked in his apartment, his memories gone and his best friend abducted, he is once again crippled with anxiety. Meanwhile, Enos struggles to free her brother from imprisonment, alone for the first time in her life.

Her true species has been revealed, and there are hints the deadliest of her kind survived an ancient war.

But the Nether contains more secrets. A musical chime disrupts daily life, signaling changes to its very fabric. To solve this mystery, Sam must face his anxiety and confront truths about his memories and unique abilities.

Only then can he save his friends from the machinations of the Life Coalition, by understanding the reality behind the Facets of the Nether.

Excerpt

– The appearance of a new house of the maji is not to be as surprising as its origin. My apprentice, who firmly appeared to be of the House of Communication, is the one who is showing me these new things, at my age. Truly, the Nether is changing.

Journal of Origon Cyrysi, Kirian majus of the Houses of Communication and Power

A chime erupted through the Imperium, as if all the crystal plates in the world rang and shattered at once. Samuel van Oen held his ears and, through the window of his mentor’s apartment, watched a flight of alien birds split and scatter at the noise.

“What was that?” Sam dropped his hands from his ears as the sound stabilized into a deep, clear tone he felt in his gut. It was loud, but not as unbearable as it had been. Deep in the back of his mind, the Grand Symphony responded to the noise like a tuning fork against a plate of metal. The different rhythms fractured and multiplied at the chime, like the whole world was vibrating.

No one answered his question, as Majus Cyrysi was out again. The Kirian had spent more time in the libraries of the Spire than in teaching Sam, not that he was ever particularly good at teaching.

The tower of the House of Communication vibrated beneath Sam’s feet as the sound lessened to a background hum. The music normally playing in its halls had ceased during the explosion of sound, but now picked up fitfully, warring with the chime’s resonance. The flock of birds—with crests of orange, and three scaly wings down each side of their body—swooped in an irregular pattern, disrupted by the noise.

Sam went to the window and looked down. To one side, dust fell from the strange stone bridge that ran from the middle height of the House of Communication to the immense wall of the Nether. He’d been out on it before, as it was a curiosity of this House, and maji occasionally used it to take in the view. There were a few maji on it now—a tall Etanela and two Methiemum—looking up at the immense wall of the Nether, bathed in blues and purples like a titanic sheet of ice.

On the ground far below, people milled around in confusion. Sam guessed the bell-like sound wasn’t normal, but he’d only been in this place a little under two months. Before that, things became blurred and hazy in his mind. The presence that had rooted through his head took many of his memories. He remembered Earth, and that he had stayed with his aunt after something happened to his parents. Their faces refused to come to mind. Thinking about what happened at the Dome of the Assembly made him seek the silence of Majus Cyrysi’s apartment, and he couldn’t stop. He was obsessing about what he could have—should have—done differently. He was slowly spiraling down to a place of solitude and loneliness, and his body wouldn’t obey his deeper wish to break the cycle.

Sam jumped back from the window as someone banged on the door. A spike like an icicle in his gut went through him. Sweat pricked his forehead.

Don’t be someone new.

It could only be one of a few people, but his throat threatened to close at the thought of explaining why he was sitting here alone, staring out a window. How long ago had Majus Cyrysi left?

Sam put one eye to the peephole in the door, then sagged in relief. It was Enos. He could ask her about the sound digging its way into his head.

He opened the door and let his friend in, looking her over. There were bags under her eyes and she hadn’t combed her long black hair.

“You haven’t slept either, have you?” said Enos.

Sam let out a burst of air. It wasn’t quite a laugh. “That’s what I was going to say.” He pulled her into the room by her hand, quickly closing the door. The hall should be familiar, but it didn’t feel like the right day to go outside. Again.

“You hear that too, right? Do you know what—”

Enos shook her head. “No idea. I was about to ask you. People are running around like mad. I don’t think anyone knows.”

Then why would she think I knew? He stared at the closed door.

Enos followed his gaze, then took his other hand. “It’s been a ten-day since you left Majus Cyrysi’s apartment.” She winced as if she had a headache. Probably that irritating chime. It was like a dull drill, pressing against the back of his head.

Sam frowned. Now wasn’t the time to talk about going out. Couldn’t Enos see he had other things on his mind?

“Before this noise started I was trying to remember…remember—” He bit his lip and focused over her shoulder. It was something about Earth. He’d almost had it.

“Remember what?’ Enos asked, bringing his focus back. “Is it connected with the attack on the Assembly? Or about the new themes you hear in the Symphony? Can they help us find Inas?”

Sam shook his head. He was letting Enos down.

She won’t want to be with me anymore.

He knew it wasn’t true, but the fact beat against the inside of his head. Inas had been the other side of a scale, balancing him. Without him, everything was harder.

About the Author

AUTHOR PIC - Facets of the Nether - William C. Tracy

William C. Tracy is a North Carolina native and a lifelong fan of science fiction and fantasy. He self-published his Dissolutionverse space opera books and has one epic fantasy published with a small press.

He also has a master’s in mechanical engineering, and has designed and operated heavy construction machinery. He’s trained in Wado-Ryu karate since 2003, and runs his own dojo in Raleigh. He is an avid video and board gamer, a reader, and a writer.

In his spare time, he cosplays with his wife such combinations as Steampunk Agent Carter and Jarvis, Jafar and Maleficent, and Doctor Strange and the Ancient One. They also enjoy putting their pets in handmade costumes and making them cosplay for the annual Christmas card.

Get a novelette by signing up for William’s mailing list or follow him on Twitter at for writing updates, cat pictures, and martial arts.

Social Media

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MEME2 - Facets of the Nether

Release Publicity: LGBTQ+

New Release Blitz: Sky Full of Mysteries by Rick R. Reed

Posted on January 27, 2020 by Mirrigold

Sky Full of Mysteries | Rick R. Reed

Publisher: NineStar Press

Release Date: January 27, 2020

Heat Level: 3 – Some Sex

Pairing: Male/Male

Length: 76,700

Buy Links:

NineStar Press | Amazon

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Blurb

What if your first love was abducted and presumed dead—but then returned twenty years later?

That’s the dilemma Cole Weston faces. Now happily married to Tommy D’Amico, he’s suddenly thrown into a surreal world when his first love, Rory Schneidmiller, unexpectedly reappears.

Rory has no memory of those years. For him, it’s as though only a day or two has passed. He still loves Cole with the passion unique to young first love.

But Cole has so many questions: where has Rory been and what happened to him two decades ago when he disappeared without a trace? He has never forgotten Rory, but Tommy has been his rock, by his side since Rory disappeared.

Cole is forced to choose between an idealized and passionate first love and the comfort of a long-term marriage. How does one make a decision like that? The answers might lie among the stars…

Excerpt

Sky Full of Mysteries
Rick R. Reed © 2020
All Rights Reserved

After they made love, they were polar opposites in how they reacted.

Cole, barely minutes after coming, would be asleep, mouth open and snoring, body lax. A baby who’d just been fed. Rory looked down on him as he sat perched with his back against the headboard. Despite—or maybe because of—the spittle that ran out of one side of Cole’s mouth, he felt a shock of warmth go through him as he gazed at Cole, wondering how he’d gotten so lucky. Although Rory was a few years younger, he was a nerd with glasses. He wasn’t bad-looking; he just wasn’t all that noticeable in a crowd. How had he snared a guy like Cole, with his perfect runner’s build, his dark brown wavy hair, and the perpetual five-o’clock shadow that accentuated, rather than hid, the angular planes of his face and his sharp jawline. Rory snickered in the darkness at Cole as a snore erupted from him, almost loud enough to shake the glass in their bedroom window.

It was always like this—maniac in the sack until he came, and then it was lights-out for Cole, as though he’d been drugged.

Rory, on the other hand, always felt energized, pumped up, alive, as if he should hop from the bed, go outside, and run a mile or three. Or make a meal. Or write the great American novel. Or catalog his collection of books alphabetically, and then by genre.

Tonight was no different. They’d just moved into the one-bedroom apartment in Chicago’s Rogers Park neighborhood. The neighborhood, the Windy City’s farthest east and north before heading into suburbia, afforded them a chance to live by Lake Michigan without the higher rents they’d encounter closer to downtown.

They were young and in love, and cohabitating was a first for both of them. Rory felt they were already having their happy-ever-after moment.

The apartment was a find—a vintage courtyard building east of Sheridan Road on Fargo Avenue. Their unit’s bedroom faced Lake Michigan, which was only a few steps away from their front door. A lake view, high ceilings, crown molding, formal dining room with a built-in hutch, huge living room with working fireplace, and an original bathroom with an enormous claw-foot tub were just a few of the amenities they were delighted to find—all for the “steal” monthly rent of only five hundred dollars.

The apartment, which would eventually be filled to bursting with a hodgepodge of furniture and belongings, ranging from family antiques supplied by Cole to Lost in Space action figures from Rory, was now a scene of chaos with moving boxes everywhere, almost none of them unpacked.

They’d spent the whole day moving and were exhausted when they were finished. Even though it was August, by the time they were done dragging the boxes out of their U-Haul truck, through their building’s courtyard, and then up to the tenth floor via the rickety but thank-heaven-reliable elevator, the skies above the lake had gone dark. They ordered stuffed spinach pizza from Giordano’s, just south of them on Sheridan, and feasted on it, melted mozzarella on their chins, on a couple of beach towels they found at the top of one of the boxes.

And of course, Rory being twenty-three and Cole twenty-six, with their blossoming love all of six months old, they did find the time and the energy to make love, once on the beach towels and once in their bed. Rory knew there’d be more of the same come morning’s first light.

Ah, sweet youth.

But getting back to postcoital bliss, Rory now found himself feeling restless as he lay beside the snoring Cole. The moon was nearly full and they’d yet to put up blinds, so it shined in the bedroom window, casting the room in a kind of silvery opalescence. Rory thought the boxes and the furniture—Cole’s oak sleigh bed and Rory’s pair of maple tallboy dressers, plus an overstuffed chair they’d found in an alley just before moving—all had a kind of grayish aspect to them, almost unreal, as if he were observing his own bedroom as a scene from a black-and-white movie. Maybe something noir…with Barbara Stanwyck and Fred MacMurray. Rory smiled and turned away from Cole. Just a half hour or so earlier, with the overhead light fixture shining down on them, Rory thought the movie would have been a porno, with himself cast as the insatiable bottom.

He chuckled to himself.

He tried to relax, doing an old exercise he’d learned from his mom. Starting with his feet, he’d wiggle, tense, and then allow that body part to go slack to relax. He worked his way up his whole body, wiggling, tensing, and relaxing as he went, until he reached his head.

And—sigh—he was still wide-awake.

Behind him, though, as if he had eyes in the back of his head, he noticed something odd.

It was like there was suddenly a waxing and waning of light.

Rory turned and looked toward the uncovered window. He couldn’t quite see the moon, but it seemed like it was brightening and darkening, brightening, then darkening…

But the whole of this August day, it had been clear, with nary a cloud in the sky. Rory wondered if a cloud bank had moved in, obscuring the moon and then revealing it as the wind pushed it away. He could see this in his mind’s eye but couldn’t quite believe it.

About the Author

RickRReed-524x749

Real Men. True Love.

Rick R. Reed draws inspiration from the lives of gay men to craft stories that quicken the heartbeat, engage emotions, and keep the pages turning. Although he dabbles in horror, dark suspense, and comedy, his attention always returns to the power of love.

He’s the award-winning and bestselling author of more than fifty works of published fiction and is forever at work on yet another book. Lambda Literary has called him: “A writer that doesn’t disappoint…”

Rick lives in Palm Springs, CA with his beloved husband and their fierce Chihuahua/Shiba Inu mix.

You can find him at:

Website | Facebook | Twitter | Instagram

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Tag Archives: SciFi

Blog Tour: A Fine Mess by Angel Martinez

A Fine Mess | Angel Martinez

Brimstone #7

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Release Blitz: Facets of the Nether by William C. Tracy

Facets of the Nether | William C. Tracy

The Dissolution Cycle #2

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Excerpt

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New Release Blitz: Sky Full of Mysteries by Rick R. Reed

Sky Full of Mysteries | Rick R. Reed

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Excerpt

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Tag Archives: SciFi

Blog Tour: A Fine Mess by Angel Martinez

A Fine Mess | Angel Martinez

Brimstone #7

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Release Blitz: Facets of the Nether by William C. Tracy

Facets of the Nether | William C. Tracy

The Dissolution Cycle #2

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New Release Blitz: Sky Full of Mysteries by Rick R. Reed

Sky Full of Mysteries | Rick R. Reed

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