Cyber Monday Promo with S.M. Schmitz

The future's so bright, I gotta wear shades!

Come find out why we love science fiction romance, at smschmitz.com/promo, where you'll find over forty of the hottest ebooks out there for $.99 or even FREE!  Tons of them are series starters, too!

I have my first book, Dignity, up for $.99 -- it's the most recent (3rd) edition.  I don't plan to fiddle with it any more, because it's as perfect as I can make it. 

I've been rewriting all my books, to tighten them up and deal with minor issues.  I've completed up to Dynasty, including the CreateSpace editions, and hope to get them all finalized in all formats by the end of the year!

As always, you can get the ten books in the To Be Sinclair series at Amazon, Smashwords, iBooks, Payhip, Barnes and Noble, Kobo, and more places than I know exist!

And please, support my fellow independent authors.  You can make a big difference simply by discouraging ANYONE from pirating ebooks!  First, authors usually have something on sale at any given time.  Second, they're usually waaaay cheap, especially compared to hardbound, paperbound, or even traditionally-published ebooks.  The most expensive ones I have out are $4.99, and that's for a huge, creaking 200,000 + word novel!

Third, paying a pitiful few dollars is the ONLY way to get your favorite authors to keep writing!  We wouldn't self-publish if the presumption is that someone will steal our work.  We are like the mom-and-pop store on the corner, trying to make ends meet.  So every single sale means a lot to us!

I hope everyone has an awesome holiday season, and I hope to be putting out three new books in 2017: all of them are prequels set in the Sinclair universe, but a few hundred years before the main series.

Namaste

SFR Brigade Presents: Excerpt from ABILITY

The Science Fiction Romance Brigade is a fabulous group of authors who offer a monthly Showcase so folks like you can get a taste of upcoming sci fi romance novels.    See this month's offerings at SFR Brigade Presents

My current excerpt is from Ability, book 9 of the To Be Sinclair series, which is now available for pre-order and will be live on July 20th:

The first female navigator in the Demesnes' Service, Princess Brielle Sinclair proves she can handle it all -- her duties, the hazing, her surly bunkmate.  She's totally ace, but her cyborg implants also give her the ability to 'see' stelluric waves, the building blocks of wormholes and stargates.

A technological disaster shortens Brielle's liberty on the planet Venturi, and leads to the retrieval of her sophomore chemistry lab partner, Lord Zak Ellison, a deep undercover agent dealing with the disaster while enslaved by a mysterious being. When her ship then gets embroiled in a puzzling energetic influence from Venturi, the Emperor needs her to handle the situation. 

How can Brielle extricate Zak from this horrible assignment, as well as help him with his troubled past? And what will it take to deal with the stelluric problem they've nicknamed the 'hellbeast'? 

Excerpt:

Nodding sagely, Ortiz directed one nod out toward the mat.  “Want to spar?”

“I only spar with Sentinels.”  At his notable surprise, she shrugged.  “I was responsible for the medical discharge of two cadets in boot camp.  I’m not about to pit myself against men who have something to prove by beating me, or who might hesitate because I’m a woman.  Because I truly don’t fight to work out; I fight to kill.”

Ortiz swallowed.  “Mind if I spread the word?”

“Not in the least.”  She stretched her legs again.  “I better do my sit-ups to balance out all the emphasis on my traps and lats.” 

“Yeah, I can see why you leave it for last.  Why do you do them upside-down, though?” 

“Because I think legs should be as useful as arms, especially if the ship were to ever lose gravity.” 

Grinning at his further surprise, she went to hang the weight bar on the highest notches she could reach, wrapped her knees over it, and began her sit-up routine.  Left, center, right, center, she never counted these, instead letting her mind roam freely until she could do them no longer. 

Hanging there afterward, heaving great breaths, she stared upside-down at the men, a few of whom were staring right back.  She wished she could spar with them, but these weren’t the sharpest, smartest, or fastest men in the Service; Sentinel recruited those men.  She simply couldn’t justify risking her life, or anyone else’s life, just to ‘work out’. 

With one more sit-up, she grabbed the bar, dropped to the floor, and practiced some crescent kicks to loosen her legs before heading back to her bunkroom.  Ortiz must not have spread the word fast enough, because four men jumped her as soon as she left the gym, each grabbing one limb. 

Fighting as dirty as she could, she bucked, bit, screamed with rage, and broke one man’s neck when she kicked her foot out of his grip and squarely into his head, feeling the crack through her cleats.  As he fell, sheer adrenaline and a twisting trick helped her pull another man over her body, breaking his forearm against her hip in an ugly compound fracture that spurted a generous amount of blood all over her, causing him to howl. 

“Hey, hey!” one fellow shouted, letting go of her other arm. Landing on her hands, Brielle twisted her other leg out of the last guy’s grip, gained her feet, and backed up against the wall of the corridor.  “We were just gonna treat you to a bit of hazing.” 

“Yeah, well, guess what?  You just cost your buddy his life.”  Brielle spat toward his face, with the bloody spittle falling just short of his feet.  “And that’s what I think of hazing.”  

She ran up the corridor as fast as her exhaustion would allow her.  Looking back just once, she saw the men huddled in grief over their companions, as men from the gym and nearby Sick Bay, Dental, and Psych departments came out to investigate the extremely brief incident.

Pre-order on  Amazon

And thank you, SFR Brigade!

Kindle Scout campaign: Ability

My blogging hiatus has resulted in my latest novel, Ability!  The tenth book in the To Be Sinclair series (one was Book 6.5), Ability features Princess Brielle Sinclair, the first woman to qualify for the all-male Service of Sinclair Demesnes.  Here is the blurb I wrote for the Kindle Scout campaign:

Ability

A princess battles an odd threat to her ship

The first female in the Demesnes' Service, Princess Brielle Sinclair proves she can handle it all -- her duties, the hazing, her surly bunkmate. Yet when she discovers an old classmate holding down a deep cover on a troubled planet, she faces a nightmare of epic proportions that no one else understands -- except Zak! 

Brielle is glad to have found him, but now her ship is in danger. Can she preserve her reputation and master her unusual innate talents while combating this mysterious threat?

Length:  112,600 words.

You have 30 days to 'nominate' a book, and you can have 3 nominations at once.  Once that book's campaign finishes, it opens up another nomination you can make.

I've read that Kindle Publishing doesn't necessarily offer contracts based on the nominations, but I'm sure they are a good indicator.  The terms of the Kindle contract are pretty good:  five years, a decent advance, clauses for if the book doesn't sell very well.  Regardless, I'll be publishing Ability this summer!

I was disappointed that the initial excerpt is only 5,000 words, though.  That isn't even halfway through the first chapter for me!  I spend a good deal of time with world-building just so when I eventually mention 'pre-emps' or an EVA suit's O2 valve blowing, you'll be able to imagine it instantly and integrate that image with the action.

Enjoy the campaign!  And all the usual:  share with your sci fi friends and relatives, tweet it, etc.  Here's the link:  https://kindlescout.amazon.com/p/XUGXBEG1JO2S

And thank you for your support!  It's been a long, hectic time since I've had a chance to blog.  I'm hoping to find what passes for 'normalcy' soon!

Namaste.