Our next featured author is KS Augustin. She has donated copy of RESTORATION to our raffle, so be sure to enter!
THE BOOKS
Restoration
Van Motaff, renowned philosopher and Rahfonist, is looking ahead to Retirement, but the planetary government has other plans. Something unprecedented has happened—a young, male Rahfoni has been raised by aliens for the past thirty years—and Van has been chosen to restore him to Rahfon society.
Even though the eyes of two worlds are on her, Van thinks the job will be straightforward enough. But when her charge, Eton Abless, is injured, an irate governor interferes, demanding that the young man be neutralised as a potential political threat. Van resists and finds herself falling into a forbidden romance with her student…a romance that may mean the end of her reputation and career, and his permanent exile. As her options narrow, Van is forced to face the conclusion that the only way to save Eton may be to lose him completely.
Get it at: Sandal Press
Also Available:
Charlee says: Couldn’t resist mentioning this one too. Sounds awesome, doesn’t it!
I Am Ebony Strike
A long time ago, a determined young woman escaped the despair of her homeworld, turning herself into one of the galaxy’s best martial artists, Ebony Strike.
Decades later, the people of her homeworld have tracked her down. They need money and, in order to get that money, they need the old Ebony Strike back. But Ebony has moved on since that time. She is now Xin Dell, a respected government security trainer. And what her people are asking of her is insane: to participate in a corrupt official’s underground fight tournament…and win. Nothing less will do.
To Ebony, it means training a body that’s out of shape, honing disused skills, spending her own time, effort and money, for a planet she’s all but forgotten. But, faced with the alternative–the death of thousands on her world–does she have a choice?
Ebony needs to be focused and ruthless. She needs to win the tournament. Little does she know that she’ll end up losing her heart.
Get it at: Sandal Press
THE AUTHOR
KS “Kaz” Augustin is an Australian author who considers herself a citizen of the world. She has several University degrees, ranging from Computer Science to international politics, is an avid reader of military history and tactics, and writes in several genres, from space opera to romance to fantasy. The one thing that remains the same through all of this is the amount of research she brings to each world, peopled by rich and varied characters. She has visited, lived and/or worked on four continents and hopes to make it all seven in the future.
Kaz is Chief Editor of online magazine, Sci-Fi Romance Quarterly, and she and her husband run the small publishing house, Sandal Press. The Augustin family consists of two human offspring, a brace of eccentric cats and a Miniature Bull Terrier (aka the Sandal Press mascot, Sausage) with a bark bigger than her entire body.
Find her at: Her Website
Mini-Interview
Q. When did you realise SFR was a genre?
A. My first SFR was published more than eight years ago, so it must have been sometime before then! LOL I actually remember when realisation first hit. It was the middle of the year, winter in Melbourne, and I was freezing my arse off in our new (uninsulated) house. I was job-hunting, doing a lot of internet surfing of the job sites, and getting distracted a lot :), and came across New Concepts Publishing. When I went through their catalogue, I noticed that there were a lot of SF/Romance mash-ups listed, and I thought to myself, wow! This is a thing? I can do this! I could love doing this!
Q. What SFR book had the most impact on your reading and/or writing?
A. Only one book? Can’t do it. 🙂 I can say that Anne McCaffrey’s Pern and Crystal Singer books were a big influence. So was EE ‘Doc’ Smith’s Lensman series, but in a completely opposite way! Frank Herbert’s Dune was unusual, in that the heroine actually survives and thrives at the end of the book! Yay! I’ve never forgotten that. Friend and author, Diane Dooley, talks about the ubiquity of Dead Wife Syndrome in SF, and I have a good chuckle whenever I think of it. But, now that I’ve braindumped that much, I think the author that represents the primal goad to me is Harlan Ellison. Here’s a talented writer who has such a bitter, unrelenting and skewed view of women within an SF narrative that I have no choice but to react to it.
Q. Do your books lean more to SF or Romance?
A. To me, SFR is a genre where, if you rip out either element (SF or Romance), the story falls apart. Each time I write a story, I run it past that test, to see if it can survive. In the case of QUINTEN’S STORY, it couldn’t, and I moved the series firmly into space opera territory after the first book. In the case of RESTORATION, however, it could. A 55/45 split in favour of SF sounds about right for most of my SFR books, but you’d really need a reader to confirm. I’ve discovered that what I think about a book is completely different to what a reader thinks of the same book!
Kaz’s plea to readers…
If we define SFR as an SF/Romance mashup, then one can easily argue that SFR has been around for a long time; longer even than historial or paranormal romance. Yet those two sub-genres have managed to bust out of the ghetto in spectacular fashion, while SFR is still languishing.
Because SFR is still “in the ghetto”, readers will find that the gems aren’t being published by the big houses, but are still very much hidden in the small presses and in the hands of those authors self-pubbing their books. In full disclosure, I’m one of those, but I’m asking on behalf of other SFR authors too, the majority of whom are in the same boat. Just like the heroines and heroes we write about it, I would like readers to explore the genre more. As much as I like Linnea Sinclair’s work, for example, she hasn’t written a new SFR novel for more than five years! Meanwhile, there are many other SFR authors out there with brand spanking new releases and vibrant series who can’t seem to get the word out.
Explore! That would be my request, and plea, on behalf of the genre. And, of course, one of the best places to find new authors is via Sci-Fi Romance Quarterly, the free online magazine for SFR readers. 😉 Sorry for the blatant plug, Charlee, but I couldn’t help myself.
Your question for an entry into the drawing:
What is the most out-of-your-comfort-zone book you’ve ever read?
Smart Girls love SciFi 
Cool! Hmm, that would be “Let’s Pretend This Never Happened” I rarely read humor.
I don’t often read humor either. I’ll have to check it out!
I can’t think of one. Does that mean I have a big comfort zone or that I just do not pick up books that I think will be ou of that zone?
Good question! But I’ll bet you read pretty widely. 😉
Fortune’s Star because the heroine was a doctor who was actively involved in the hero’s torture. I really enjoy this author’s stories, but I could not get around this flaw in my eyes, because I am a physician and could not get into the heroine’s head.
That’s a tough one!
Let’s enter the way-back machine to the early 80’s when I worked at a library (perfect job for me). The book I chose to read was Peeper by William Brinkley, a comedy about a peeping tom. Although I love comedy now, at the time it was so far out in left field for me (I was reading Georgette Heyer almost exclusively for goodness sake) that I considered myself crazy for wanting to read it. I really loved it, though. It is good to push the envelope.
Sometimes an out of genre book like that can be a nice stretch of the legs. 😉
William S. Burroughs’s Naked Lunch. I read it in high school, but the memory lasts. I like to continue to challenge myself, but I guess Burroughs bent my brain enough that it’s harder to do nowadays.
*laughs*
What is the most out-of-your-comfort-zone book you’ve ever read? I picked up an anthology collection a while back that advertised paranormal. I read just about everything, and the price was right. Yes, it was paranormal. But, without warning, it also contained bestiality and rape. I think it was the shock factor, the no warning, that threw me so far out of my comfort zone. I was not expecting it at all, and it was nice or sweet, and didn’t end. It left me on a cliffhanger with no desire to want to continue the story. I was so shocked by this first story, not to mention being left with a cliffhanger, I have yet to go back and read any more of the anthology. For all I know there are some good stories with HEAs there.
BTW – SFR rates up there with all the best TV Sci-fi that gets cancelled just before it find it’s audience. It’s like the red headed step child that gets neglected, but is great to know if given just a bit of a chance. Thank goodness for sites like this and Sci-Fi Romance Quarterly where we can find good info one what is out there. Thank you!
Awe, were happy to share good books! Someone once told me that all it takes is one. One really standout book in the genre to make it mainstream. Maybe we just need our twilight or fifty shades of gray. Or maybe not.
Book? Moby Dick. Yep, I didn’t expect that either. But there is this one scene where they have finally killed a sperm whale and now they have opened the head where the ambergris is located and one sailor after another accidentally falls. So then we have these sailors covered in ambergris, which is suppose to smell incredibly good and is used in perfumes. Plus it is slippery and the color of human ejaculation, so then things get a little touchy feely. Now I didn’t mind at all that it was M/M. It was the dead whale and the sailors playing around in the ambergris compartment of the head and becoming aroused. Dead animals should not lead to arousal.
Much of the rest of the book was rather boring.
Short story? It was a Neil Gaiman story that featured a child molester.
Out of my comfort zone? I read the original book MILLION DOLLAR BABY which is one of many short stories about boxing. I ended up falling in love with the style.