This month I have two awesome authors that taste great together! Uh... Write great together? Yeah, let's go with that. Please welcome S. Reesa Herberth and Michelle Moore, co-authors of The Slipstream Con, an m/m/f menage availabe now from Samhain Publishing.
Blurb for The Slipstream Con:
Is love the biggest con of them all?
A Ylendrian Empire story.
For three years, Kellen Frey has led bounty hunters Tal and Vanya on a merry chase, evading capture with flair and style. Now, just when they finally have their pet project—and object of their mutual fantasies—cornered, the elusive con artist turns the tables and gives himself up. A sudden attack of conscience, perhaps? Tal and Vanya know better.
Their suspicions are confirmed when a crime lord comes dangerously close to killing them all, and the rapidly sickening thief is forced to confess the truth—he’s been accidentally dosed with a highly illegal form of nanotechnology.
If Kellen can’t get his hands on another dose, he’s finished. The problem is, the only thief who’s ever broken in to Slipstream Labs is his ex-girlfriend, and she’s allergic to bounty hunters. As he does his best to play both sides, he struggles with his growing desire to be more than a prisoner to Tal and Vanya. Without trust, they won’t survive long. The clock is ticking as they race to uncover a conspiracy that spans the Ylendrian Empire.
Don't miss the excerpt from The Slipstream Con at the bottom of the post. But first, let's find out a bit more about Michelle and Reesa.
Tell us about your recent publication.
Michelle: The Slipstream Con is most definitely a scifi romance. It’s also a scifi caper story (think “White Collar” or “Oceans 11” in space). And last but certainly not least, it’s a ménage story. Apparently a very unusual ménage story in that it’s sweet and all three characters are equal partners. Well, and it’s not x-rated. Readers have shared with us that they like this, and that makes me happy.
Oh, the hub and I love White Collar! And I don't know if I've ever heard of a sweet menage story. Way to work the market, ladies!
My favorite reader quote:
This was my first ménage book, and I was a little leery at first. I go crazy for the "always and forever" kind of romance, so I wasn't too sure how I'd like the emotional side of love being split three ways. But the attraction between Frey, Tal and Vanya was so instantaneous -- so REAL -- that it drew me in right away.
Nice!
What gave you the idea for this story?
M: I think this was a case where the story and the characters developed simultaneously. Usually I’m a character-first person, so it’s really cool when the characters show up with a plot in tow! That saves a lot of time, since I'm not sitting around thinking "Oh, wow, these are some awesome kick-ass characters. Um… what should they do?" Tal and Vanya showed up with their own agenda, and goodness knows Kellen had his. The fact that they all collided was sheer perfection.
How did you start writing?
M: I started writing stories as soon as I learned to read. The thought of being able to create people and worlds fascinated me then, and the glow has never faded. My aunt still has copies of stories my cousin and I wrote during a car trip to Florida when we were five.
So even then you were collaborating. Very interesting... (That last bit was in an Austrian accent, and I was wearing glasses, scribbling in a notebook, and smoking a cigar, in case you missed it.)
Thank goodness for Reesa, though! We’ve been writing together for well over 15 years, and I’m not sure I would’ve ever finished anything I was happy with without her. We started out by role playing characters we’d created, and our writing styles meshed so perfectly that it was only a matter of time before we started creating stories for a wider audience. The realization that other people wanted to read what we loved writing is one that still makes me incredibly happy.
How wonderful!
If you could change one thing about the publishing industry, what would it be?
M: Promoting! I HATE it. It’s stressful and I end up getting so tense and anxious over it that I start doubting my writing ability, and end up sitting staring into space with my brain all jellified. It’s not pretty. I want to write. I don’t want to waste creativity and time thinking up marketing schemes that I’m not qualified for. I doubt I have the skills to sell candy to small children, much less likely my books (however much I love and believe in them) to a potentially indifferent public. I keep hoping the publisher will do that. Or maybe my mom…
Ah, but you're here now, and doing a great job. :)
Who is your favorite character, and why?
Reesa: Of our own characters, I'd have to go for Kellen Frey at the moment. He's slick, but not as slick as he thinks he is. He's handsome, but… well, okay, he probably is as handsome as he thinks he is. He's got charm to spare, but it's tempered with sarcasm and a bit of an absurdist streak. Throw in the quick wit and a faulty moral compass, and I'm sold.
Picking a favourite out of someone else's cast, I think I'd go with Captain Malcolm Reynolds. For a lot of the same reasons, but also because he rocked a pretty floral bonnet, and understood that family could be created, not just born into.
Do you now write, or have you ever written, fanfic? If so, what fandoms, pairings, etc?
R: I've read in fandoms too varied and expansive to list. My current main fandoms are Pysch (Shawn/Lassiter, Shawn/Gus, or gen), White Collar (Neal/Peter/Elizabeth, or really, anything the fandom throws at me), Merlin (Merlin/Arthur), and my recurring love for due South, Supernatural, and Harry Potter. I've written for due South, Supernatural, Harry Potter, Firefly, Psych, Buffy, Shelter (movie), the X-Files, and Smokey and the Bandit. (Yes, you read that right.) I love fandom, and (on its good days) the sense of community and support it provides. There are things I don't like about it, too, but my 17 years in fandom have been mainly positive, and not only made me the person I am today, but a better person than the one I would have been without it.
I've been dipping into the White Collar fanfic myself recently. Yummy. And I agree that the community is very supportive of its writers. Pretty awesome, really.
What kind of impact do you hope your work will have on readers?
R: We've now had two readers tell us that they stayed up past their bedtimes because they couldn't put our books down. That was absolutely one of my goals as a writer, and I'm chuffed to be told about it.
Author C.B. Potts once asked for people to tell her what story meant to them. The best answer I could think of was that story was more than what happens between the first line and "the end." Story, to me, is all the unexplored little broken bits that come before and after, and shape the narrative you're writing. I guess my hope is that a reader will walk away from our writing with more than just the book they read - that the story before and after will intrigue them and stay with them, too. In a way, it ties in with the question about fandom. I think a lot of fans like to explore the places between the story they've been given, and the one they can envision before or after it. I hope that we've left them those places, and created that desire to explore with us.
Terrific interview, Michelle and Reesa. Thank you!
Excerpt - The Slipstream Con by S. Reesa Herberth and Michelle Moore
He froze, eyes slamming closed, but not fast enough for Vanya to miss the flash of pain. Impossible to tell if it was physical or mental distress, especially when he hunched over, pulling his knees up to his chin, face buried. “Would it be possible to continue this conversation a little later? I’m not—” A ragged breath interrupted whatever he was going to say.
When Frey didn’t continue, Vanya frowned, fingers trailing across the lock pad indecisively. There was a reason it had taken as long as it had for them to run him down—the man had conned the best. She’d also spent a lot of years trusting her instincts, and right now they weren’t flashing any warning signs. Transferring the tool kit to her other hand, she keyed in the code, slipped through the door and waited for it to close behind her before she stepped over to the bed.
“Please go away, Vanya. Please.” There was little left of the cultured voice, replaced by rough desperation.
Vanya sighed and shook her head. “I don’t think that would be a good idea.” It wasn’t a good idea to be reaching down and brushing a hand through Frey’s hair either, but there she was, doing it anyway.
His skin was hot under her fingertips, hotter still against her palm when he turned his face into her hand with a small, inarticulate sound. “Go. Away.” In direct contrast to his words, he was leaning into her, his weight almost pushing her off balance.
“You’re sending me really mixed signals here.” She let him rest his head against her hip, feeling the heat through her clothes. “On the one hand, Tal was right, the sick-prisoner bit has to be the oldest con in the books. On the other, that doesn’t seem like a fake fever, and we’re not so far from the station that we can’t turn around and get you medical care.”
“No.” Hands shaking, he used her leg for leverage, fingers slipping along the curve of her thigh as he pushed himself back against the wall. “If you want your bounty, the last place you should set foot on again is that station.” He laughed, forcing himself to sit upright, and she admired the fact that he could maintain even this level of composure. “Damn it, Vanya, you’re not stupid. Why the hell are you in here with a prisoner, unarmed? You have no idea what I’ve got, and you’re not in a contagion suit.”
“Did you just try to frisk me? Nice. I appreciate your concern for my safety. What you don’t have is any known communicable disease. The ship’s systems run a scan on all new passengers as they come aboard, and you’re not carrying anything it recognizes as contagious. So I’ll ask you the same thing Tal asked—is this withdrawal?”
“I don’t know what the fuck this is!” The explosion startled her, not for the vehemence so much as the language. Frey was known for his manners, and in all the years they’d spent building their construct of his life, not a single person had ever mentioned him being anything less than polished and elegant. Watching him fall apart was disarming, as she was sure he’d intended if he were trying to work the situation. As authentic as it seemed, he was that good, and she couldn’t discount the possibility.
“Poison? The scan wouldn’t have gotten that.” She folded her arms across her chest. The tool kit was still clutched in one hand, and his eyes tracked it for just a second too long. “Oh, now that’s just cold. She poisoned you?”
“She’s in over her head. She asked me to do her a favor, but I don’t think she knew—” The startled grunt of pain cut off any words, and if he was faking the way his pupils blew wide, he was better than anyone could have ever dreamed. She dropped the kit and fell to her knees next to the bed as he dwindled down into the mattress. Breathing only in rapid, shallow gasps, he looked terrified.
“Tal, get in here.” Trusting the ship to carry her message, she pulled out her notebook, already accessing the nav systems to turn them around to the station.
Frey’s hand fell across hers, and he shook his head, beyond words.
“You want to die? Neither of us is a medic, Frey.”
He still shook his head, and she was ready to pass it off as a seizure when his fingers landed on the screen of her notebook, and he froze.
Thundering footsteps pounded down the corridor, and Tal appeared outside the glass, fumbling the code once before he got the door open and came in, gun drawn and leveled on Frey.
“Are you okay?”
“I’m fine. He’s not,” Vanya said.
Frey’s hand was locked around her notebook, and the lines in his face were smoothing out, the shudders fading little by little. Vanya attempted to pry his fingers loose, dropping both his hand and the computer when it proved akin to trying to yank something out of a vise. Tal pulled her back. The room smelled of burning plastic, and the screen of her notebook cracked under the pressure of Frey’s fingertips. He gave a final shudder, and the device fell to the floor, destroyed. His hand dangled open off the side of the bed, the fingertips as blistered as if they’d been scorched, and though his eyes were closed, his breathing had returned to something like normal.
“What the fuck just happened?” Tal echoed her own sentiments exactly. If she’d had even the slightest idea, she would have told him.
Thanks for stopping by, Reesa & Michelle!
Posted by: Jessica Freely | August 17, 2011 at 10:24 PM