d4 by Sherrie Cronin - Book Tour + Giveaway
Speculative Fiction
Date Published: Jan. 31, 2015
Publisher: Cinnabar Press
A clairvoyant young woman finds her visions of the future to be a nuisance, until she discovers that she is hardly unique. An entire group of seers has learned how to profit from their knowledge in ways that Ariel has never considered. Another group is obsessed with using their talents to understand a dark future they cannot ignore.
An alliance with either crowd looks dangerous, given that they both seem a little crazy. There is no possible way to help them both. Worse yet, each group is convinced that Ariel is more than a potential asset; she’s the one thing that they must have in order to fully succeed.
Excerpt
He was arriving Friday morning, and Ariel found herself looking forward to the visit. It was nice to be dealing with at least one uncomplicated man, and better yet one who she was growing to admire and genuinely want to help. So she was particularly dismayed when she walked into the office that Thursday morning in mid-August and found a huge bouquet of lilies and white roses and Japanese anemone and amaryllis all lavishly adorned with white baby’s breath occupying half her desk. Now what?
She touched the flowers and found herself with a quick premory of a young florist’s happiness at receiving lavish praise for his fine work at an upcoming local wedding. Never mind. She reached for the card instead.
“Can’t stop thinking about you,” it said. Her first fear was that the flowers were from Baldur, and then it occurred to her that it would be even worse if they were a make-up gift from Siarnaq. However, she was even sadder when she saw that the card was signed “Mikkel”. Damn. Her one simple relationship had just gone complicated.
Before the day was out every guy in the office walked by and made some snide remark about the flowers and unwelcome guesses about the identity, and particularly the intentions, of their sender. Ariel endured the comments stoically and refused to satisfy anyone’s curiosity as she spent the rest of the day irritated.
Damn him. Why did he have to go and do something like this? Now she dreaded Mikkel’s visit.
She had offered to pick him up at the airport, and he gave her a funny look the next morning as he got in her car and she refused to look at him as she gave him a cold hello.
“Did I do something wrong?” he asked.
“That was totally unnecessary,” she snipped. “And embarrassing and inappropriate.”
“What was?”
Out came the story of the showy white flowers. The ensuing ride to the office was filled with Mikkel’s discomfort that someone would do that in his name and Ariel’s disbelief of his denial and Mikkel’s irritation at Ariel’s lack of trust in his word and her irritation at his… Ariel stopped. She realized that she was annoyed at having been embarrassed, but clearly she was upset with the wrong person.
“So who did send the flowers?” they both asked in unison and then laughed.
“Who wants me to hate you?” she asked.
“Who wants you to like me?” he countered. “I get why it was embarrassing, but guys generally do send flowers because they want to be liked, you know.”
They ran through the names of everyone they could think of, including Eoin, Baldur, and Cillian, but neither of them could think of a plausible reason for such odd and expensive behavior.
Sherrie Roth grew up in Western Kansas thinking that there was no place in the universe more fascinating than outer space. After her mother vetoed astronaut as a career ambition, she went on to study journalism and physics in hopes of becoming a science writer.
She published her first science fiction short story long ago, and then waited a lot of tables while she looked for inspiration for the next story. When it finally came, it declared to her that it had to be whole book, nothing less. One night, while digesting this disturbing piece of news, she drank way too many shots of ouzo with her boyfriend. She woke up thirty-one years later demanding to know what was going on.
The boyfriend, who she had apparently long since married, asked her to calm down and explained that in a fit of practicality she had gone back to school and gotten a degree in geophysics and had spent the last 28 years interpreting seismic data in the oil industry. The good news, according to Mr. Cronin, was that she had found it at least mildly entertaining and ridiculously well-paying The bad news was that the two of them had still managed to spend almost all of the money.
Apparently she was now Mrs. Cronin, and the further good news was that they had produced three wonderful children whom they loved dearly, even though to be honest that is where a lot of the money had gone. Even better news was that Mr. Cronin turned out to be a warm-hearted, encouraging sort who was happy to see her awake and ready to write. "It's about time," were his exact words.
Sherrie Cronin discovered that over the ensuing decades Sally Ride had already managed to become the first woman in space and apparently had done a fine job of it. No one, however, had written the book that had been in Sherrie's head for decades. The only problem was, the book informed her sternly that it had now grown into a six book series. Sherrie decided that she better start writing it before it got any longer. She's been wide awake ever since, and writing away.
Contact Information
Website: https://46ascending.org/
Twitter: @cinnabar01
Purchase Links
Barnes and Noble: http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/d4-sherrie-cronin/1121480771
Giveaway
3 autographed paperback copies of y1 (a related tale of the adventures of Ariel’s shape shifting brother)
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2 Comments
Thank you for posting
ReplyDeleteI appreciate the chance to have an excerpt from d4 on this blog!
ReplyDeletePlease try not to spam posts with the same comments over and over again. Authors like seeing thoughtful comments about their books, not the same old, "I like the cover" or "sounds good" comments. While that is nice, putting some real thought and effort in is appreciated. Thank you.