I’m on Michelle’s blog today to
give my thoughts on science fiction.
I love science fiction. It’s my
favorite genre with the possible exception of fantasy. I love them both.
I read my first fantasy novel
when I was thirteen. It was A Princess of
Mars, by Edgar Rice Burroughs. My father, an avid sci-fi reader, had
purchased the first several books of the series in hard cover, illustrated by
Frank Frazetta. I was fascinated by the cover, which depicted a very muscled,
scantily clothed man (imagine that!) and a well-endowed, even more scantily
clothed female on an alien world, complete with vanquished aliens. Once I
started reading, I was hooked. ERB wrote fast paced stories set in unbelievable
worlds with stunning heroes. And they were full of hokey romance as well—I was
in heaven.
I devoured as many of ERBs books
as I could talk my parents into buying for me, including the first sixteen or
so (LOL!) in the Tarzan series. For
Christmas that year, my dad bought me a boxed set of six early Heinlein novels,
including Tunnel in the Sky, Time for the
Stars, The Door Into Summer, and Have
Spacesuit, Will Travel. They ushered in my love affair with science fiction
that continues to this day.
So it’s inevitable that, once I
started writing, I would try my hand at science fiction and fantasy. Indeed,
the first couple of novels I wrote, both yet unfinished and unpublished
although not for lack of content (together they are 1400 pages or so), are
fantasy novels. What is surprising is that the first story I published, the Rough Boys trilogy, is not fantasy or
sci-fi. It’s a modern, urban coming of age novel. It also doesn’t suffer from
lack of words though J.
Sci-fi rarely contains romance.
I, personally, am not interested in reading detailed descriptions of weapons or
propulsion systems that haven’t been invented yet. I also tend to skim when it
comes to political intrigue and ideology—some is okay, but if it goes on for
more than two pages I start to yawn. However, give me some steamy sexual
tension mixed in with the aliens and exotic fauna and I can’t put the book
down.
So when I started writing, and
subsequently reading, M/M romance novels, I was delighted to discover a
compelling selection sci-fi and fantasy stories were available in this genre.
One of the first I read was MA Church’s The
Harvest. OMG, Keyno is one of the sexiest aliens ever! I’m also waiting
with bated breath for the next chapter of In
Enemy Hands to come out (hint, hint!).
Some of my other favorite M/M
sci-fi novels are, in no particular order: Hot
Cargo, by Nicki Bennett and Ariel Tachna, A Solid Core of Alpha, by Amy Lane, Prisoner 374215, by Angel Martinez, A Blinded Mind, by Cari Z, and Zero
Hour by Jordan Castillo Price.
I’m currently working on a
dystopia novel, which is also a Christmas story, called Christmas in Zonei. It’s got the requisite evil, controlling
government, a hot gene-modified shifter, and a gorgeous telepath (oops, I think
I just gave away some info that hasn’t come out in the novel yet J).
I’m posting the story chapter-by-chapter on my author website, http://authorjvaughn.com as well as on http://gayauthors.com and http://literotica.com.
So, rest assured, I’ll be
reading and writing more sci-fi in the future. Sci-fi with aliens. Hot, hunky
aliens. Yum!
Giveaway
What the heck. As long as I’m
posting on Michelle’s site, might as well give something away. I’ll give a copy
of The Valjevo Encounter, (which is
paranormal rather than sci-fi but definitely not your typical vampire novel) to
a randomly selected commenter.
Please put your email address in your comment so
I can find you, or be sure to check back in a week when I post the winner.
Book Blurb
This is the description
of Christmas in Zonei,
which is the dystopia story I’m currently writing.
In the bleak, harsh world
of the future, daily existence is a struggle. When Kim finds a huge man
freezing to death on the street, he takes him in and shares his meager fare
with him. Raeden is the most stunning man Kim has ever seen, but he’s also
rude, ungrateful, and suicidal. After Kim discovers that he is a gene-modified
shifter, built by the government for killing, his survival becomes much more
tenuous. But Raeden needs him desperately and soon Kim finds he needs Raeden
too.
Publisher’s note: Contains scenes of graphic
violence, off-page non-con, and male/male sex.
Excerpt from Christmas in Zonei
To set the scene for the following excerpt, Kim has found Raeden
freezing to death on the streets and brought him into his home. But once he
thaws out, they discover that Raeden’s hands and feet have been badly
frostbitten, and he is no longer mobile. So he’s stuck at Kim’s apartment for a
while…
“Why?” Raeden asked.
“Because you stink!” was Kim’s
terse response.
“Get used to it.”
“No. You’re in my home. You will
maintain a minimum standard and you’re way below it right now.”
“I didn’t ask to be here. You
should have left me where you found me.”
“Yes, I should have,” Kim snapped,
“but I didn’t. Besides, look at how filthy your hands and feet are. If those
blisters pop, they’ll get infected.” By now Raeden’s blisters had gotten
larger, and many of them were very dark, almost black. “You need to get clean
if you don’t want to end up stuck here forever.”
Raeden growled something
unintelligible, staring at his mutilated feet.
“Hand me your coat and hat and
then see if you can crawl into the bathroom. I think you’ll feel a lot better
once you’re clean.”
“Ain’t nothin’ gonna make me
feel better.”
Kim stood at the foot of the
futon and glared at him, hands on hips.
Raeden snatched the wool
skullcap off his head and threw it at him, his anger apparent in the force of
his throw. The soft cap smacked Kim harmlessly in the chest and he let the
filthy hat fall to the floor. The big man’s greasy hair was plastered to his
head where the cap had been. He started working on the top button of his wool
jacket with his blistered, swollen fingertips, swearing under his breath.
“Here, let me.” Kim’s anger
vanished as soon as he saw Raeden struggling to do as he’d asked. He dropped to
his knees next to the bed and leaned over Raeden. Brushing the big man’s
injured hands away, his own nimble fingers made short work of the buttons.
Raeden scowled at him, but leaned forward so Kim could help him slide the coat
off.
The room was a comfortable
temperature now, having been warmed by the three teakettle’s worth of water Kim
had heated for the bath. The gauge on the PowMon sat at one-point-five percent.
He would recharge it while Raeden was soaking in the tub.
As he lifted the filthy coat
away from Raeden, he realized there was a distinct vomit smell wafting off of
it. Ugh! He tossed it onto the floor
next to the skullcap. He would do laundry now too.
Raeden lurched to his hands and
knees on the futon, resting his weight on the heels of his hands, his injured
fingers curled carefully away from the soft surface. With a determined look on
his face, he began to crawl slowly off the futon, cursing as his fingertips
grazed the edge.
Kim found he was holding his
breath as he shadowed the big man on his slow progress to the bathroom.
Daylight filtered through from the other side of the curtained partition and
Kim shuddered as he got a look at Raeden’s blistered feet from the underside.
The toes were almost unrecognizable as such and Kim wondered if the darkness he
saw was the toes themselves or simply dirt. There was a long clear blister
along the edge of one of his soles, and some smaller but still sizable blisters
here and there on his feet.
Raeden’s pants were filthy, the
seat caked in dried mud. Kim was suddenly aware of the huge muscles moving
underneath the layer of soiled fabric and he quickly looked away.
Once in the bathroom, Raeden
flipped over to a sitting position. “Fuckin’ ridiculous. I don’t need no bath,”
he grumbled.
Kim ignored his comment,
applying toothpaste to a spare toothbrush and handing it to the man.
“You don’t have a sonic
toothbrush?” Raeden asked. When Kim shook his head, Raeden took the brush and
brushed his teeth without objection, taking his time and seeming to do a
thorough job. Kim wondered how long it had been since he’d brushed his teeth.
He knelt up to spit and rinse in
the sink, his giant stature making him almost as tall on his knees as Kim was
standing.
When he finished, Kim took the
opportunity to unbutton Raeden’s shirt for him. The act seemed intimate. It was
different from when he helped his mother during her final days, more like
something you would do with a lover. Kim found himself keeping his eyes averted
lest Raeden catch him ogling.
When he stepped behind Raeden to
help him slip the shirt off, his breath caught in his throat. Raeden was
wearing a skintight tank under his shirt, which did nothing to hide his massive
shoulders and back. He was ripped. Kim had never seen such perfection and
hadn’t expected it, given the vagrant’s deplorable condition.
Then he gasped in surprise and a
tremor of fear ran through him. Raeden’s skin had a pattern on it, like scales.
When he looked closely he saw it wasn’t something that had been inked into his
skin—it was part of the skin itself. The faint, intricate lines covered his
shoulders and the base of his neck, disappearing up into his hairline.
His skin started to crawl as the
realization hit him. He gasped out, “You’re a mod!”
“No shit!” Raeden’s response was
irritated. “You didn’t figure that out by my size? No normal people are this
big.”
Kim found that he had
involuntarily taken a few steps back, but there was nowhere to go in the small
bathroom. His heart was slamming against his ribs. “I … I’ve never seen a mod
before,” he stammered, trying to get his terror under control. Mods were
extremely dangerous … unpredictable.
Raeden smirked at him.
“I thought … I thought…”
“You thought mods were a myth?”
Raeden quirked an eyebrow at him in amusement and somehow that eased his fear a
notch. He stared at the scale pattern, which seemed to cover every inch of
Raeden’s exposed skin except his face.
“What can you do?” The question
slipped out of his mouth unbidden.
“Nothin’ anymore,” Raeden
growled.
Kim’s
curiosity got the better of his fear. “But what kind of mod are you?” he
pressed.
“Nothin’
anymore,” Raeden repeated. His voice had an edge to it and Kim decided he
shouldn’t push for an answer. He wondered briefly if Raeden could read
minds—he’d heard that some of them could—but he dismissed that thought. The
giant didn’t seem like that kind of mod.
Author Bio
Jay Vaughn lives in sunny
Seattle, a clean, progressive city that is way too expensive for a writer’s
income. Therefore, Jay holds down a full-time, computer-industry day job, but
writing is her passion. It’s a hobby-gone-wild, so much so that her teenage
kids accuse her of being an addict.
Jay carries her laptop
everywhere and can often be seen combining other favorite activities with
writing. For example, you can find Jay sitting at a small table in the back of
the gay bar around the corner from her house, drinking wine and writing. Or
waking up early while camping, dragging out the laptop, and writing. Or writing
in the truck on the way to and from concerts, ski-trips, visits to relatives
... wherever.
Jay’s favorite genres are
sci-fi, fantasy, and M/M erotic romance. She discovered M/M quite by accident
when she was writing a traditional fantasy novel, and one of her characters
ended up in an all-male prison for a bit too long. Whoops!
Find out what Jay is working on
next at http://www.authorjvaughn.com
or drop her a line at jayvaughn@live.com.
She’d love to hear from you.
Buy Links
My most recent published novel, The Valjevo Encounter, is available from
these fine retailers:
Divergent Publishing: http://www.divergentpublishing.com/?product=the-valjevo-encounter
AllRomanceebooks.com: https://www.allromanceebooks.com/product-thevaljevoencounter-1659021-153.html
