Reign & Revolution by Janine A Southard @Jani_S w/ @XpressoReads Book Tours

Reign & Revolution
Janine A. Southard
(Hive Queen Saga, #3)
Publication date: April 12th 2016
Genres: Science Fiction, Young Adult

The Hive Queen Saga’s Thrilling Conclusion!
Rhiannon and her Hive have mastered space travel. Sort of. At least, they’re better at it. They’ve outsmarted kidnappers, survived severe oxygen deprivation, and heisted back their own ship engine from would-be thieves.
Since joining up, they’ve traveled further and further away from their home planet. But out on Yin He Garden Station (in Chinese-owned territory), home catches up at a physics symposium.
When Alan’s former research advisor makes an offer that’ll bring them home as respected members of society, Rhiannon knows she has to accept. But home isn’t exactly as she left it, and a hostile space fleet stands between her aging ship and her new/old life. Should she be running towards the fleet, or scurrying back into international space as fast as her craft can go?

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Previous books in the series:

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EXCERPT:

If Rhiannon had known how much time she’d spend in her ship’s airlock, she might have decorated. As it was, the place was small and bare aside from the bright spacesuits of its current occupants. Grey metal covered the walls and the un-adorned floors. A spoked wheel—in the same grey metal—blended into the door that would open the ship to the outside.

The vestibule barely had enough space for her Hive to cram inside.
Would the wheel be hot or cold to the touch? Rhiannon would never know, only coming here when she was already kitted up. Hands slick in her spacesuit’s recycled air.
The staging room where she’d donned her red crackle-painted suit—I still wish I knew whether the paint was supposed to look like this—was barely better. Banks of grey metal lockers held full-body suits that might protect a wearer from the void.
For the moment, she left off her hood-like helmet. If someone asks, I’ll say it’s to save oxygen. Her nose would itch the second she couldn’t touch it, made worse by the sweat-scent of everyone who’d ever worn the red gear. Her fingers and toes were already clammy in their rubber casings. She’d spritzed the inside with perfume to combat the rankness, and she hoped to find herself ensconced in a cocoon that was still human-humid, yes, but also vital with amber notes, like a thick waft from a nightclub. This next outing would prove the idea’s worth.
All five of her Devoted readied themselves beside her. Gavin flexed his knees to check his black suit’s range of motion. Luciano had chosen the bright yellow rubber that made him look like a deformed chicken, not that she’d tell him that. Victor wore a grey suit that matched the rest of his clothes, and Alan poked at his pad with a blue-coated finger.
Mel, of course, had chosen to go au natural—aside from his regular vest—since his metal body held up well in vacuum. He wouldn’t have been able to fit all his limbs into a human-shaped spacesuit anyway.

Author Bio:
Janine A. Southard is the IPPY award-winning author of Queen & Commander (and other books in The Hive Queen Saga). She lives in Seattle, WA, where she writes speculative fiction novels, novellas, and short stories... and reads them aloud to her cat.
All Janine’s books so far have been possible because of crowdsourced funds via Kickstarter. She owes great thanks to her many patrons of the arts who love a good science fiction adventure and believe in her ability to make that happen.
Get a free piece of fiction when you sign up for Janine A. Southard's newsletter (http://bit.ly/jasnews). The newsletter will keep you current on things like her latest release dates (and fun news like when her next Kickstarter project is coming). Usually, this is once a month or so, but sometimes goes longer or shorter. Your address will never be shared, and you can unsubscribe at any time. Plus: free ebook! (Rotating freebies mean I can’t tell you what the work is right this second.)
You can hang out with Janine online where she’s crazy about twitter (@jani_s) and periodically updates her website with free fiction and novel inspirations (www.janinesouthard.com)

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These Convergent Stars by Janine A Southard - #Excerpt BLITZ

These Convergent Stars
by Janine A Southard

Published:  October 2013

Word Count:  25,000

Genre: Science Fantasy / Science Fiction

Synopsis:

300 years ago, Earth was destroyed, but the Terrans aren’t giving up. Maya Qaitra is a special type of Terran, created to sniff out biologically compatible species. But Maya’s talent comes with a hefty cosmetic price: half the time, she looks like a mountain lion.

On a space station over the planet Elsajh, she’s mistaken for a local shapeshifter and goes with the flow. After all, how better to observe a new species and culture? While impersonating her alien look-alike, Maya stops an invasion and becomes a populist hero. Sure, that seems great, but her mistaken identity stirs trouble for her and her doppelganger. If she’s not careful, she could get her whole species banned from Elsajh forever.

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Janine A. Southard writes speculative fiction and videogame dialogue from her home in Seattle, WA. She sings with a Celtic band and is working on the next book in the Hive Queen universe. She's also been known to read aloud to her cat.

The cat appreciates all of these things. Maybe.

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Excerpt:

I padded along behind Rzis, down dusty streets and through cozy alleys bordered by a perplexing mix of delicate new construction and pitted stone walls that had clearly stood against the tossings of time and weather. I kept far enough behind that he wouldn’t mark me.

How better to research a new world than by following the local law to the scene of some really weird sounding crime? As ship’s Mahdan—and, thus, First Contact Specialist—I heard plenty of strange terms, so the perp’s being “a Shalanite” was no problem. But this crime matched nothing I’d heard of before. How did small-time guys annex anything? And who would bother to annex a bank?

Once I learned the answers, maybe I’d suggest to the commander that we bypass this world entirely.

I kept expecting shouts and complaints. My mind created an echo here—Baastards should all be put down!—and another over there—Goodness! Look at those teeth!. I bared my incisors at this imagined detractor. Why did they always point out the teeth, as if mentioning them stopped me from using them?

But it didn’t go down like that. No one shouted at all. A few people cleared out of our path, yes, but we were heavy things barreling along. Also, my unwitting companion was The Law. If anyone recognized him, they’d scamper away for that reason alone.

When we reached the bank, Rzis was the first enforcer on location, so he had to distinguish the facts and stall till his pack arrived. The guy inside the bank, however, had me fluffin’ flummoxed.

Think about it for a minute. You’re holding up a bank. What are you there for? Money. Otherwise, why bother with the bank? Okay, your other reason could be to keep others from said money, on the assumption that banks are unconnected. In that second case, you could more effectively blow the place up, preferably with something that makes fiat money impossible to repair.

So, there’re a couple of plans and motives. But all they had in common with reality was the location. There was a guy holding up a bank. He had hostages, but made no fuss about killing anyone. No ransom note on hand. His pockets could maybe carry a double handful of precious whatever.

Over a primitive loudspeaker he repeated, “I annex this bank and the property on which it stands for the state of Shalal. All Shalanite citizens are welcome here. I annex this bank....” And so on in perpetual duplication.

Rzis shifted hominid about twenty feet from the bank’s front door. I hadn’t paid him much attention earlier, before he’d gone leonine, but now I could see that he was quite the strapping young lad. He was about 6’4”—a sensible for the size considering his other form—though he looked older than I’d thought he’d be. Maybe he’d waited till he was successful before embroiling himself in the arranged-marriage market.

He had the same dark coloring and shiny hair as his leonine self, and that shiny hair included a gentle dusting across his face and arms. Where a Terran would have nearly invisible vellus hair, he had a dark, downy, not-quite-fur. Aliens. What can you do? I wanted to pet him.

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