Today we're introducing Author Lee French and her book Dragons in Pieces,
a virtual book tour from Fire and Ice Tours.
I don't know about you, but tiny robot dragons is enough to get my interest.
Don't forget to enter the giveaway….enjoy following the tour!
Virtual Book Tour Dates: 1/27/14
- 2/24/14
Genres: Science Fiction,
Adventure
Blurb:
All Bobby wanted was a girl to come home to after a hard day of work. Like the last one said before she left, he was going exactly two places - no and where – and he was happy with that. But somebody had other plans for him. A murder. The Terrorist Watch List. For what? Underage drinking? Things couldn't possibly get worse. Right?
Oh yes, they could.
A lot.
He wouldn't believe superheroes were real if he wasn't one himself.
Tiny robot dragons send him chasing his humanity and his future, on the trail to discovering his past and a place to call 'home'. If he's lucky, maybe he can get a beer there.
Excerpt:
It was Matthew, they recognized him
from the photos. He wore jeans and nothing else. Every part of him
left bare was smeared with blood and his eyes were panicked,
terrified. It took him a moment to register both that the kitchen
light was on and two strange men sat at his table, then he freaked
out. In the space of perhaps two seconds, the jeans disappeared, his
body grew muscles and fur and claws, his head reshaped with a fanged
snout. He was easily nine feet tall and the scariest damn werewolf
Bobby ever saw, probably because he was in the room with it, and it
wasn’t just a costume.
The swarm was a much better place to
be, and Bobby went there. Stephen, though, seemed calm, saying, “How
apropos that a vampire and a werewolf should fight this close to
Hollywood. With dragons, to boot. I wonder if we’ll attract any
orcs or fairies.”
Matthew let out a loud roar and jumped
at Stephen, the two of them started fighting. Bobby, unable to get
into it much without causing a problem for Stephen, got the dragons
to open the door a crack so ten could slip out and keep watch. If
someone was coming, he wanted to know about it before they arrived
and got involved. It seemed clear that Stephen could hold his own
against this thing, but who knew how much they’d beat each other up
before one of them lost. To try to help the odds, the dragons went in
for the werewolf’s legs.
The little critters couldn’t really
do much more than annoy Matthew, they found his skin to be much too
tough for their little teeth. He’d be scratched up later, but not
really injured from this assault. They had to be careful, too, to
avoid getting hurt themselves. Stephen threw the werewolf into the
fridge, Matthew returned the favor by tossing the vampire through an
inner wall, putting Stephen in the bedroom unexpectedly. They did
what Bobby thought of as wrasslin’, except for the fangs and claws
and superhuman strength they both apparently had. It carried them
back through the apartment, wrecking it as they went, until Stephen
was thrown through a window and Matthew chased after, like a dog
going after a stick.
Now it was public. There was a very
real chance that one or more of Matthew’s neighbors noticed the
initial noises and already called someone about it, but Bobby was
willing to bet this spectacle would get some attention. He could
almost imagine the call to the police. ‘Officer, there’s two
costumed freaks wrasslin’ around outside, making a heckuva ruckus!’
Or however the locals would say that. The swarm followed them out,
keeping a watch all around. There just wasn’t anything he could
think of to do that would actually help Stephen directly. Aside from
how much nothing he could do to harm or even distract Matthew, he was
terrified of what would happen if a dragon got crushed.
They were horribly loud. Matthew
sounded like a giant angry dog, Stephen sounded somewhat like a
person making large cat noises. Stephen made an effort at keeping
them close to the apartment, but Matthew really enjoyed tossing the
vampire for distance and chasing after him. Bobby suspected that
Stephen would just have flown out of reach, but the goal was actually
to subdue the werewolf, not just get away from him. As a result,
Bobby discovered that Stephen could heal himself, but every time he
did, he looked a little more haggard.
Things, of course, got worse. A police
car screamed onto the scene, brakes screeching as it halted sideways
to block their passage farther down the street. Bobby saw it coming,
but couldn’t think of anything to do about it. Really, he was just
as helpless as any other bystander here. When he had some time to
breathe, he’d try things and see what he could do with his dragons
in this sort of situation, but for now, he had nothing to contribute.
It was an unpleasant feeling, one that reminded him a lot of how he
felt when that needle went into his leg at Jasmine’s apartment,
except that this just kept going on and he didn’t get the luxury of
blacking out for any part of it.
Out of the car with his gun drawn, the
cop shouted for the two men to freeze and get on the ground. Matthew
had his attention drawn by the command, and Bobby reacted as he saw
the werewolf bolting for the car. This was stupid, but he couldn’t
let the cop get hurt just for being the one to show up. Faster than a
speeding werewolf, Bobby re-formed right in front of the cop so
Matthew could hit him instead. When the claws swiped through the
space, Bobby exploded into dragons again, causing the sharp claws to
pass right through empty air.
Author Guest Post
Hi there. My name is Lee French, and I've written some books. They're excellent, of course, so obviously, you should read them. I was asked to do this guest post, and I stressed over it for a few days, until I received this shirt in the mail. I ordered it a while back and more or less forgot about it. Getting it was like having a Secret Santa kept so secretly I didn't even know I was participating.
My actual favorite superhero is Nightcrawler, but I've never run across anything putting him on a squirrel battle mount. As a result, I may have to re-rank Deadpool higher on my list. If he can get a squirrel battle mount, he's obviously worthy, probably more than I've previously given him credit for.
You see, I have a thing about squirrels. (I'm going to tie this back to Dragons In Pieces, I promise.) It's mostly a joke. When I was growing up, we had pine trees in the backyard, which attract squirrels. In my backyard now as an adult, I have two English walnut trees and an oak. Since I like to garden, this isn't always great, but I started cracking jokes about how the squirrels were my minions, and it stuck and now I have squirrel stuff, including stickers all over my electronic devices and a copper sign in my front yard.
The original concept for the Maze Beset trilogy - of which Dragons In Pieces is the first book - came from a Mutants and Masterminds role playing game that I run. I'd never used the M&M rpg before, and since I was going to be the GM, I decided to make a character to learn the system. That character was Jasmine Milani, a half-Iranian woman whose primary superpower is that she can shapeshift into a squirrel.
Jasmine is not the main character of the story, she's a secondary character whose purpose is to be comic relief. Her part in the story allows me to introduce some bad guys and a complication, and start showing my version of one of the everpresent themes of many superhero stories. In the words of Uncle Ben, 'With great power comes great responsibility'.
Squirrel!
Buy Links:
About the Author:
Lee French lives in Worcester, MA with
two kids, two mice, two bicycles, and too much stuff. She is an avid
gamer and active member of the Myth-Weavers online RPG community,
where she is known for her fondness for Angry Ninja Squirrels of
Doom. In addition to spending much time there, she also trains
year-round for the one-week of glorious madness that is RAGBRAI, has
a nice flower garden with absolutely no lawn gnomes, and tries in
vain every year to grow vegetables that don't get devoured by
neighborhood wildlife.
Connect with Lee French:
Giveaway:
Author Lee French is giving away a
print copy of Dragons in Pieces. Enter at Goodreads!
Thanks for hosting. I enjoyed writing the guest post. :)
ReplyDeleteI enjoyed reading it..thx!
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