QSFer Erik Schubach has a new lesbian fantasy out, book 1 in the New Age of Heroes series: Sparo Rising.
Sparo Rising is a spinoff series from the Techromancy Scrolls. Each book features a standalone story of a different side character from the Techromancy Scrolls that readers wished to hear more about. This first book centers around Lady Verna of Wexbury, and her rise to Knighthood.
Almost three thousand years after an extinction level event on Earth, mankind seeks to regain its former glory, in a new world where magic and technology collide.
Verna had always dreamed of becoming a knight and protector ever since she was a child and a stranger gave his life to save her family from marauders.
She and her best friend, Celeste, share the same dream and aspire to become Squires so that their dreams could be realized. After being passed by in the first choosing when she had been fifteen, both she and Celeste are chosen by knights the following year.
The threat of an army of marauders calling themselves the Horde, under a man called the Reaper. casts a shadow upon their training over the years, until things come to a head and Wexbury answers the call for help from the realm of York… the Reaper is at the gates.
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Excerpt
It’s funny the things that come to mind when you’re sure you are about to die. Here I was, far from home, in the detachment sent to liberate York Keep from the siege. My knight, Lady Anita, led a third of our people to head off the marauders behind the main battle who had breached the walls of the Keep and were dragging off the women and young, while killing all the men they could.
The Knights of York were as valiant as any I have ever witnessed, but were outnumbered five to one… the few left to defend the people of the Keep were being slaughtered, while Wexbury and Flatlash Knights engaged the Reaper’s Horde, an army of outlaws who spread terror throughout the Lower Ten realms of Sparo. These animals took everything, raping, pillaging, plundering… and even engaging in cannibalism if they didn’t steal enough supplies to feed their growing army.
I was exhausted but kept pushing forward like Lady Anita. She always inspired me with her unquenchable spirit and one day I hoped I would rise from squire to become a knight she could be proud of.
That’s when I stepped in front of a large marauder who was about to strike down his battleaxe on a scrappy young girl who had bit his leg on the blood-soaked ground just outside the walls. A child, the man was going to kill a child. I couldn’t allow that, but we had been fighting for so long, and I was stronger than many full knights but even I was beyond exhausted. And as invincible as I had felt at the beginning of the battle, taking down the enemy, I couldn’t get my blade up fast enough this time since my arms felt like lead.
As the blade struck me in the face, it was sort of odd, because it didn’t really hurt… I mean, I felt the bone-jarring blow as I watched the spray of blood arcing away, so I knew that this was it… my end. Part of me was afraid, but it was overwhelmed by pride that I was to die protecting others, and it gave me a moment of introspection, my mind wandering, as I felt the axe slash across my face and neck to embed in my collar bone, back to the day I had become Squire just two years ago.
Author Bio
I got my start writing novels by accident. I have always been drawn to strong female characters in books, like Honor Harrington. And I also believe that there is a lack of LGBT characters in media. So one day I came up with a story idea that combines the two… two days later I completed the manuscript for Music of the Soul.
Each of my books features strong likable female characters that are flawed. I think that flaws and emotional or physical scars make us human and give us more character than simply conforming to some “social norm”.
I write in many genres including romance, scifi, fantasy, paranormal, dystopian, and even cozy mysteries.
My most ambitions undertaking is the Techromancy Scrolls series that is an epic adventure in the world three thousand years after a mass extinction event. Mankind is rebuilding in a world where magic and technology collide.