Last Star Standing by Spaulding Taylor - Book Tour + Giveaway

Last Star Standing

by Spaulding Taylor

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GENRE: Thriller (speculative)

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BLURB:

Aiden has always felt like an outsider. After the rebel assassin is captured and imprisoned by the world’s galactic overlords, he awaits execution. Then a mole working for the occupying regime alerts him to a plot that could destroy the entire resistance...

Engineering a daring escape, Aiden’s growing feud with the new rebel leader leaves him out in the cold and smouldering with resentment. Faced with deceit and betrayals on every side, he recruits a group of overlooked outcasts and stakes everything on one last mission.

Can the restless, reckless Aiden take a stand long enough to save humanity from enslavement?

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EXCERPT

Lips parted, the woman pressed eagerly forward. The target smiled at her but instead selected a pudgy lad of about six. He passed a skinny guy – who looked, the poor sap, practically broken-hearted. He was almost upon us. My heart sped until it seemed ready to jerk straight out of my chest. Choose me. Choose me. CHOOSE ME.

The Enlightened One seemed – or was it only my imagination? – to be gazing directly at me. Pushing swiftly past Petra I extended my hand. He turned, made a strange gesture, almost of benediction, then wired the back of my hand with that thick blackened stump. An instant surge of heat pulsed up my arm and throughout my torso. Then a wild swirl of fuchsia-slashed-with-orange flashed beneath my eyelids, as if the same stars, fiery and spot-lit against the black, had been injected into my brain. My every corpuscle felt fired, an almost intoxicating sensation, especially after the chill of the poison. I half-stumbled, almost squashing a smallish alien, and only saved myself from falling at the last second. 

Through a haze – my eyeballs felt as if they were swimming in flaming waterfalls – I saw Petra and moved towards her. Of course. She couldn’t risk being stamped, in case the creature died too fast. As we walked the ornate brand began to swell on my hand – a warming, tightening feeling. The sense of strangeness accelerated, though this might have been from my borrowed DNA, the chilled poison in my blood, or the fiery stamp. But nothing could dent my happiness, because – I’d done it. I’d assassinated The Enlightened One.

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Author Interview 1. If you could apologize to someone in your past, who would it be? I’d like to apologize to waaaaaaaaaaaaay more people than I could list here!!! I hope I’ve already apologized to them, though. I’m very fiery, is why. My temperament is rather like my hero’s – and, like Aiden, I still have lot to learn.

 2. If you could keep a mythical/ paranormal creature as a pet, what would you have?

A gromoline. Read the book to find out why.

 

3. How do you keep your writing different from all the others that write in this particular genre?

Easy. While I’m writing, I never allow myself to read any book in that genre.

I learned this trick as a professional cellist, while still at Jacobs School of Music, one of the top institutions in the U.S. Janos Starker, the major cello teacher, advised us never to listen to recordings of the cello concertos we were working on, as it contaminated our personal interpretations. Great advice!

 

4. What are the best and worst pieces of writing advice you ever received?

1) The best advice was to get Word to read your book back to you. Yes, the “voice” is awful, BUT… you catch almost every misstep, every clunky word selection, every issue of pace.

2)     The worst advice was to “wait” before publishing another book. As long as you maintain very high standards, faster is better… far better, in terms of sales etc.

5. Are the experiences in this book based on someone you know, or events in your own life?

Aiden – I have to admit – has been accused of being more than a little like me, in terms of temperament. He has trouble with his fiery temper, his impatience, and his ambition. His tendency to shoot from the hip is very, very me. But, as for events in my own life, have never:

1)     been captured and imprisoned by aliens – and escaped

2)     been betrayed by my lover with my leader

3)     assassinated a dangerously manipulative politician

4)     worked as a prominent rebel against an oppressive regime

5)     lived through what amounts to a buddy movie

6)     had my space vehicle boarded by lethal alien forces etc. etc.

You can see where I’m going with this…

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AUTHOR Bio and Links:

Alice (Spaulding Taylor) McVeigh has been published by Orion/Hachette in contemporary fiction, by Unbound Publishing in action/adventure and by Warleigh Hall Press in Austenesque fiction. Her novels have won Gold Medal/First Place is the Global, eLit and Pencraft Book Awards, been runner-up in the Independent Press Awards, finalists in the Eric Hoffer, Rone and Wishing Shelf Book Awards and selected by Shelf Unbound as one of the "top indies" of 2021. Two of her novels are currently finalists in the CIBA Book Awards (the Cygnus and Goethe Awards). Her most recent novel (Harriet: A Jane Austen Variation) was just selected as Editors’ Pick “outstanding” on Publishers Weekly.

A professional London cellist, Alice lives in London and Crete with her professor husband: their only child is completing her Masters in Chinese Literature. They also share two miniature long-haired dachshunds and an incurable addiction to tennis.

Links:

https://linktr.ee/ASTMcVeigh

Facebook: (me) https://www.facebook.com/alice.mcveigh.5/

                  (author me) https://www.facebook.com/alicemcveighauthor

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/mcveigh.alice/

Twitter: https://twitter.com/astmcveigh1

Amazon author page: https://www.amazon.com/Alice-Mcveigh/e/B07TDKZPVT/ref=aufs_dp_fta_dsk   OR

https://www.amazon.com/Spaulding-Taylor/e/B08TRLNW31/ref=aufs_dp_fta_dsk

Amazon.co.uk: www.amazon.co.uk/Alice-Mcveigh/e/B07TDKZPVT?ref=sr_ntt_srch_lnk_1&qid=1610184384&sr=1-1 

Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/1108881.Alice_McVeigh

Linked in: https://www.linkedin.com/in/alice-mcveigh-59ab1718/

pinterest https://www.pinterest.co.uk/astmcveigh/_saved/

tiktok: https://www.tiktok.com/@alicemcveigh0?lang=en

Video for Last Star Standing: 

https://www.tiktok.com/@alicemcveigh0/video/7092364955680279813?is_copy_url=1&is_from_webapp=v1&lang=en

Sales link:  Book will be on sale for $0.99 during the tour. 

https://www.amazon.com/Last-Star-Standing-Spaulding-Taylor-ebook/dp/B08PF4ZTZF

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GIVEAWAY INFORMATION|

One randomly chosen winner via rafflecopter will win a $50 Amazon/BN.com gift card.

a Rafflecopter giveaway