Hello, “Under the Ember Star”

I was setting up an Amazon Author Page for Amazon.France today when a book cover popped up that I hadn’t seen before. I looked a little more closely, and it was the cover for Under the Ember Star, which is finally in print through both Amazon and Barnes & Noble. The publication date says March 29, 2012, but I checked as recently as last week and it wasn’t yet up. I think March is when it was submitted.

This one comes from Wildside Press, through Borgo Press as the purchasing imprint, and it’s listed as Wildside Double #25. Yes, you heard right. It’s a double book, in the tradition of the old Ace doubles so many of us remember fondly. There are two books printed back to back, each with its own cover. My cover is below, and I think it’s one of the best I’ve had yet. 

The second book is by Mark E. Burgess and is called The Battle for Eden: The Human/Knacker War, Book 3. Military SF probably best describes it. The three books of the Human/Knacker war are only loosely tied together by the concept of the Knacker invasion of Earth’s space territories. I’ve read all three and each stands alone just fine without the reader needing to know anything about the other two. I read “Battle for Eden” when it was first suggested as the flip side for my work, and it’s full of action and adventure, and quite a lot of intelligent thought.

Under the Ember Star is the book I wrote last summer, and I’m very proud of it. I’d call it a mixture of Space Opera and Sword & Planet adventure.  If you want to look for literary forebears, well, I gave special acknowledgments to Leigh Brackett and C. L. Moore in the book.  If you think of Sword of Rhiannon and the Northwest Smith stories, you’d be hitting close to the feel I was going for in the story.

I’d say “Ember Star” is the same kind of action-oriented adventure story I’ve tried to tell most of my life, but in one way I really tried to stretch myself with this book. For the first time in any of my longer works, the main character is female. She’s also carrying a little more baggage than my typical hero, but that doesn’t stop her from kicking ass. I’m happy with how she turned out.

Here’s the Blurb for Under the Ember Star:  “Ginn Hollis was fourteen when her father's mysterious death left her alone on the planet Kelmer. She's grown up since then. Kelmer is a harsh world, an old world: its people are ancient, its civilization long fallen and dimly dreaming under a brown dwarf sun the natives call the Ember Star. But now, long dormant forces are beginning to stir on Kelmer, forces that could destroy the planet forever...or bring it back to life. One being stands at the center of the turmoil. His origins are veiled, his destiny is unclear. Everyone wants a piece of him. Only Ginn Hollis can protect him from both sides--if she can save herself first.... Another grand science-fantasy adventure by a riveting storyteller.”

You know, I like the sound of that. I hope you do to.

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