City of Hope and Ruin
by Kit Campbell and Siri
Paulson
~~~~~~~~~~~~~
GENRE: Fantasy (with
LGBTQ romance)
~~~~~~~~~~~~~
BLURB:
Every night the
monsters hunt.
A city that is the whole world: Theosophy and her companions in the City militia do their best to protect the civilians from the monsters, but they keep crawling from the Rift and there’s nowhere to run. Theosophy knows she’ll die fighting. It’s the best kind of death she’s seen, and at least she can save lives in the meantime.
They say the Scarred carve you up while you’re still alive.
A village in the shadow of a forest: Refugees from the border whisper about the oncoming Scarred, but Briony can’t convince her brother to relocate his children to safety. Briony will do anything to protect them. She owes them that much, even if it means turning to forbidden magic.
When Theosophy and Briony accidentally make contact across the boundaries of their worlds, they realize that solutions might finally be within reach. A world beyond the City would give Theosophy’s people an escape, and the City’s warriors could help Briony protect her family from the Scarred. Each woman sees in the other a strength she lacks—and maybe something more.
All they need to do is find a way across the dimensions to each other before their enemies close in.
A city that is the whole world: Theosophy and her companions in the City militia do their best to protect the civilians from the monsters, but they keep crawling from the Rift and there’s nowhere to run. Theosophy knows she’ll die fighting. It’s the best kind of death she’s seen, and at least she can save lives in the meantime.
They say the Scarred carve you up while you’re still alive.
A village in the shadow of a forest: Refugees from the border whisper about the oncoming Scarred, but Briony can’t convince her brother to relocate his children to safety. Briony will do anything to protect them. She owes them that much, even if it means turning to forbidden magic.
When Theosophy and Briony accidentally make contact across the boundaries of their worlds, they realize that solutions might finally be within reach. A world beyond the City would give Theosophy’s people an escape, and the City’s warriors could help Briony protect her family from the Scarred. Each woman sees in the other a strength she lacks—and maybe something more.
All they need to do is find a way across the dimensions to each other before their enemies close in.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Excerpt
Three:
The spirit was beautiful, a tall, statuesque woman who had a
hard glint in her eyes. Her hair was short, indigo blue through the glow and
tightly curled, her skin a lighter shade over wiry muscles. One hand clenched a
smallish item made of metal, the other a long tube with some kind of blade on
the end. Briony had never seen anyone like her. Though she glanced around and
held her body like someone expecting danger, her bearing was proud and strong,
and every inch of her spoke of power and competency. A warrior. Briony had
heard stories of them, left over from the Great War, but had never seen one herself.
Was that when this woman was from? The War?
“The trio—the monsters—where am I?”
Briony realized she hadn’t responded, and that perhaps this
spirit had been looking for someone to talk to for a very long time, and maybe
she would assume Briony couldn’t see or hear her either. “Don’t be afraid,” she
said.
The spirit's eyebrows rose. "That's a...never mind.
What is this place?"
“Well,” Briony started, taking a step forward. But her ankle
buckled and she stumbled, managing to catch herself before she fell.
“You’re injured,” said the spirit. “Were you attacked?”
“Yes—you see, there was a Fracture back there, and—”
Confusion crossed the spirit’s face. Maybe she was even older; maybe she didn’t
know about the War.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~
AUTHOR Bio and Links:
It is a
little known fact that Kit was raised in the wild by a marauding gang of
octopuses. It wasn't until she was 25 that she was discovered by a traveling
National Geographic scientist and brought back to civilization. This is
sometimes apparent in the way that she attempts to escape through tubes when
startled.
Her
transition to normalcy has been slow, but scientists predict that she will have
mastered basics such as fork use sometime in the next year. More complex
skills, such as proper grocery store etiquette, may be forever outside her
reach.
Kit can be found cavorting about the web at her blog
(http://landsquidattack.wordpress.com) or website
(http://kitcampbellbooks.com), on Pinterest
(https://www.pinterest.com/campbell1091/), and even occasionally on Twitter
(http://www.twitter.com/KitCampbell).
Siri Paulson writes all over the fantasy and science
fiction spectrum, including (so far) secondary-world fantasy, urban fantasy,
steampunk, Gothic, historical paranormal, and YA with spaceships. She is also
the chief editor at Turtleduck Press (http://turtleduckpress.com/). Siri grew up in Alberta,
Canada, but now lives in an old house in Toronto. By day, she edits non-fiction
for the government. Her other current passion is contra dance, a social/folk
dance done to live Celtic and roots music. Her favourite places in the world
are the Canadian Rocky Mountains and a little valley in Norway.
Siri's short fiction and the anthologies she has
edited can be found on Turtleduck Press, at
http://turtleduckpress.com/wordpress/2010/11/30/who-is-siri-paulson/
. She blogs at https://siripaulson.wordpress.com/ and
tweets at http://twitter.com/Siri_Paulson.
Multi-region buy link for ebook: http://authl.it/B01DYSR7QE
The
book is on sale for $0.99 on Kindle or Nook the day of the tour.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~
GIVEAWAY
The authors will be awarding a $50
Amazon or B/N GC to a randomly drawn winner via rafflecopter during the tour.
How is it different for each of you working together and apart as writers?
ReplyDeleteI find writing duos and groups interesting. In school they only ever did the awkward every other paragraph with a partner thing...
Luckily, Siri and I have fairly similar writing styles, so we work together pretty well. What we didn't expect was that everything would take twice as long, because of the level of coordination necessary. But it was nice to have the motivation of knowing someone was waiting on you.
DeleteWe didn't directly write together most of the time, but if we did need to work on something simultaneously, we used Google Docs, because multiple people can edit at the same time (we live about 1500 miles apart, so everything was done digitally). Mostly we worked on our own stuff and checked in constantly.
Thanks for the question!
Great question! We had a lot of fun co-writing this. Kit has lots of experience co-writing, which probably helped. We're both semi-pantsers (seat-of-the-pants writers) and think about writing in much the same way, which definitely helped!
DeletePersonally, I'm prone to stalling and thinking that my story sucks (tip: everyone thinks their story sucks at some point), so having Kit there made it possible for me to push through and finish the first draft and then keep going to finish the edit, all in a rather short timeline. Here's hoping I can do it again with my next solo novel....
Siri Paulson
Thanks for hosting!
ReplyDeleteThank you for informing me of this book.
ReplyDeleteI am new to the Fantasy genre but my daughter is a big fan! Thank you for sharing the excerpt.
ReplyDeleteGood excerpt - lol at Kit Campbell's bio - have never heard of Octupi maurading in the wild....thanks for the chance
ReplyDeleteNever underestimate what wild octopuses can and will do! ;)
DeleteThanks for hosting, and good luck to you all!
ReplyDeleteSiri Paulson
Good luck with the release!
ReplyDelete--Trix