QSFer Marie Brown has a new 99 cent FF fantasy book out:
A cry in the woods leads Ranger Kell Ardantin to the rescue of a
lovely young lady, escaping a horrible fate in her homeland to start life
anew.
Get It On Amazon
Giveaway
Marie is giving away a copy of her book “Desert Rose” with this post – comment below for a chance to win.
Excerpt
Cinnamon heard the
sound first, as usual. She flung her head up and snorted, ears pricked.
“What is it, girl?” Kell patted the mare’s neck and strained her own
hearing. Nothing, of course, just the gentle sighing of the chill breeze
as it passed through sodden leaves and over drenched grass. The mare
halted of her own will, ears trembling as she analyzed that distant sound,
then she moved into a canter, smoothly covering the ground faster than
most horses could gallop.
They’d traveled a good distance, probably a quarter mile, when Kell
finally heard something over the sound of her Great Horse’s hooves: a girl
screaming. Her heart leaped into her throat and she loosened her
shortsword, hardly more than a big knife, in its scabbard, then checked
the strap securing her bow to the saddle. Yes, ready to do its job and
release the bow quickly if needed.
She could see the disturbance ahead now, and urged Cinnamon to move
faster, faster. Mounted men crowded around a fallen figure. Some of her
tension eased. With the men still mounted, the chances of rape decreased
dramatically.
“Hold!” Kell yelled. Her horse plunged into the group and the other
horses, startled, shied and tried to scatter. She reined Cinnamon in a
tight circle and halted her between the mounted men and the sobbing,
whimpering figure of a young woman, hardly more than a girl, below. The
men—Shandar gentlemen?—fought their horses to a standstill and stared at
her in shock, completely incongruous in their sodden finery atop their
fine blood horses.
“You have no business here, Ranger.” The oldest of the lot, the one best
dressed, recovered first. “Move away from our lawful prey.”
“I’ll determine what’s lawful here, thank you very much.”
Cinnamon fidgeted, snorting. At her feet, the girl’s sobs eased a bit and
Kell saw a hint of movement, yellow mixed with mud. “Will you kindly tell
me what’s going on?”
“Fugitive retrieval.” Oh, cold, cruel man! It showed in his eyes, steely
grey in the light of the overcast day, and sounded in his hard, controlled
voice. Always one with an eye for horses, Kell noticed the firm grip he
kept on his plantation walker’s foamed mouth and the beast’s pinned ears,
the ropes of lather on its neck. Poor thing. “Now step aside.”
Kell favored him with a cold look. “As you pointed out, I’m the Ranger
here, and I’ll thank you not to order me about in my own jurisdiction.”
One of the younger men made a small, startled movement, holding out a hand
as if to ward off a blow, and several of the others shifted in their
saddles, glancing at each other. Their horses sidled into a tight knot, as
though the riders thought proximity to each other would provide protection
from the Law.
“Yes, that’s right, you lot are out of Shandar now. That village over
there,” and she jerked her head backward to indicate the first
outbuildings of Rebka, suddenly brilliantly visible as the setting sun
broke through a clear band in the clouds, “is a good half day’s ride from
the border of Shandar Province. This girl is now under my protection. Will
you please tell me her crime, that I may know if she needs to be jailed or
not?”
Author Bio
“Marie Brown has lived in many locations across the United
States, but spends most of her time exploring the realms of imagination.
Currently located in Colorado, her brief moments of free time are spent in
front of her computer, frequently covered in cats.”
Blah.
Yeah, okay, that’s all true. But I’m tired of hiding behind a bland,
third-person pseudo-bio, utterly lacking in personality.
Hi! I’m Marie Brown, and I write a lot. I self-publish through Smashwords
and Amazon because I got tired of getting “well-written, but not our
thing” rejection letters. Because, you see, most of my fiction tends to
include characters that are either bi or just plain homosexual, and
despite increasing acceptance of human sexuality and its many variations
across the world, heroes and heroines are still supposed to be straight.
Well, mine aren’t. So if you’re brave, and you don’t mind that the main
character of a story either isn’t interested in sex at all, or is quite
likely to hop in bed with someone of the same gender, then give my
writings a chance. Come explore my fantasy worlds, or my science fiction
worlds, or even spend some time with an occasional random love story set
on Earth.
And by the way, just this once, I wrote this entire blurb without a cat on
my keyboard.
Amazon https://www.amazon.com/Marie-Brown/e/B01F16R1L8/
website http://evilkittenproject.net/index.html
facebook https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100010121836495