Wednesday, June 02, 2010

Guest Post by KS Augustin

You obviously read Rowena's blog because you're reading these words. Have you noticed how opinionated she is? How downright cranky on occasion? How she loves looking for that political subtext? She's a woman after my own heart!

While I've been a bit anxious appearing at other blogs, I have no such qualms here where I can always rely on straight-shooting Rowena to say what she means. It doesn't matter whether I agree with her or not. She's got balls, and I admire her for that.

There, just wanted to say that before I got started.




I write SFR (Science Fiction Romance) and, to me, part of the rationale behind science-fiction is pissing people off. By and large, if you want a comfortable read that neatly fits into your views without taking a single shuffle out of line, you don't read sf or any of its sub-genres. And me, I like to shake things up a bit.

Grim view of the future? Check. Discrimination? Check. Brutality? Check.

And, against that dark background, what better than a love story? But not just any love story. How about a highly intelligent woman who really just wants a big fat pay-off for her years of hard work? Or a man whose memory is wiped every two days? How about putting them on a military vessel at the edge of space and then telling them they have to escape somehow? Why don't we mix in a technology to give, or take, millions of lives? Throw in an handsome ship captain with his own secrets? A skilled scientist who's turned his back on ethics? And you, as you figure out who, really, are the terrorists in this tale?

That's IN ENEMY HANDS. It's one of the launch titles of Carina Press. If it sounds intriguing but you'd like to know more before you slap down your hard-earnt cash, the entire Prologue is up at my site http://www.ksaugustin.com/?page_id=378. Have a read and see if it's your cuppa. And yes, it's written in UK English.

Thanks for having me here, Rowena. I've had fun.

Kaz Augustin is a Malaysian-born writer of science-fiction, romance, and permutations of the two. Her website is at http://www.ksaugustin.com and she blogs at http://blog.ksaugustin.com You can also find her on Facebook and Twitter; just look for “ksaugustin”.

COMPETITION: I'm giving away two copies of IN ENEMY HANDS at my blog, Fusion Despatches [http://blog.ksaugustin.com]. To be in the draw, stop by and comment at the Competition post, telling me at which blog you read about my book. You have till 30 June!

4 comments:

RowenaBCherry said...

KS.
Thank you very much. In view of my efforts in bearding pirates, I think I prefer being called a shit kicker.

However, as long as I'm not required to display my sex on my Facebook profile (they give me a choice), I can live with "balls".

Thank you for being my gracious guest, and for announcing such an intriguing contest.

s7anna said...

I do love Rowena's blunt posts... They are always thought provoking and on point with the issues she brings on.

I've been stalking you during your blog tour KS and I'm only falling more in love with this latest release from you.

*hugs*
Anna

Kaz Augustin said...

Thanks for the invite, Rowena. You can understand that "I kick shit" doesn't quite have the same melodious ring as "I have balls" though, can't you? ;)

Hey Anna! I'm still living off that other hug you gave me. :) Lovely to see you here. Aren't you a beautiful cat? LOL

RowenaBCherry said...

LOL. Kaz, I think you may have missed a nuance from my context.

"I kick shits" has a ring to it...

Pardon the mixed metaphor. I was pretty annoyed with a pirate on one site (which is sponsored by MGM casino, and Dell computer advertising).

Mind you, she doesn't hold a candle to the pirate who has shared over 1,300 novels (and is in trouble now, because she shared one file 24 hours before she started to read it, and discovered that her real name and IP address was on every page.)

IPs can be looked up using Google Search. Real names can be matched to IP locations using Zabasearch.