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Tag Archives: Susan Grant

Susan Grant, Author of Warleader – Interview

12 Wednesday Dec 2018

Posted by WWMB in Featuring....

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

interview, scifi romance, series, space opera, Susan Grant

Interview with Susan Grant

Riley:  Visiting Whiskey With My Book today is author Susan Grant. Susan is the author of several books that are favorites of many Scifi Romance readers, including yours truly. Her most recent release is Warleader, the first book in her Borderlands series. Susan, welcome! And thank you for taking the time to answer my general, personal and possibly impertinent questions!

Susan:  Thank you! And thanks for having me. I like impertinent. Bring it on. 🙂

Riley:  I always like to hear how an author got started writing. What inspired you to start making up stories and writing them down?

I can’t remember a time that I didn’t make up stories. I was always the go-to kid when we played imaginary games. My friends would ask, “Where are we going today, who will we be?” (AKA early world-building skills). Before I knew how to write, I’d get out my crayons and color scenes to go along with the tales in my head. I loved creative writing all through school, however my years at the US Air Force Academy didn’t allow for many English classes, it was mostly engineering there. (my nightmare, but I wanted to fly jets so badly that I struggled through). It wasn’t until I was in my thirties, a mom of two young kids, that I started to write a real novel. It was an epic historical saga about immigrants. I never published it. My second attempt was a time travel romance (AKA someone explained “writing to market”, and time travel romances were hot at the time (1997) so…. The book I wrote next was Star King, about a couple in their forties, and the hero is an alien. (clearly I had no learning curve about writing to market, lol). But these became my first two published books on 2000, and wouldn’t ya know—Star King ended up doing great and birthed a series I still write now and again).

Riley:  You have a ‘day’ job as an airline pilot. In flight, you are almost way out there in space (like the heroine and hero of Warleader). In that job, have you seen any UFOs or other unexplained phenomenon?

Susan:  It’s funny you ask that, Riley… Just last week I was crossing the Northern Pacific in the middle of the night. No moon. The sky was filled with stars. The Milky Way was brilliant. Suddenly, there was a bright object streaking sideways, level, right to left, heading north. Whoa! The captain saw it too. Shooting star or alien visitor? You decide!

Riley:  (Ooh, I just got a chill.)

Will you tell us a little about Warleader and the Borderlands series?

Susan:  Warleader is a true book of the heart. It was a joy to write. It is also a joy to see the book wearing the cover it deserved, and the story told like I wanted it to be told. Admiral Brit Bandar was a character I carried around in my head for years while I waited for her story to evolve. Then Finn showed up, and everything coalesced.

I had written a humorous-but-touches-on-serious-themes sci-fi romance series (Otherworldly Men) for Harlequin. As the trilogy went on, the world expanded, and I wanted to continue it. I wrote Moonstruck (which became Warleader ten years later) that launched the Tales of the Borderlands trilogy, a slightly darker take on that world.

The Coalition and Drakken civilizations have fought each other for centuries. There would be times of relative calm, but it was only to regroup and keep on going. How could there be peace when neither side was willing to accept anything less than absolute domination and utter annihilation of the other?

Here’s some backstory:

In the world of the Borderlands series, no one alive knows what peace looked like, what it feels like, or if it’s possible to sustain it. Yet once, long ago, the galaxy was whole. In fact, the worlds of the Drakken were the original cradle of the goddesses (more on this in Royal Recruit (was My Favorite Earthling) that comes out this spring. Eventually, under threat of religious extermination, the goddesses were forced to flee their home. They found refuge on the icy planet Sakka (the Ring from Warleader orbits this world), where they formed a new government, the Coalition. The two sides have warred ever since.

Every Coalition schoolchild can recite the history of the Great Schism, but not even the most respected military minds and scholars could have predicted how it all would come crashing down. No one considered the potential power of all the undocumented believers living across the Drakken border, worshipping in secret. When the warlord is killed, billions of faithful begin pouring out of the shadows. In an almost bloodless coup, the Drakken Empire implodes, a people’s revolution like what happened in Eastern Europe in the 1980s when the Berlin Wall fell, or, for a short time, the Arab Spring.

This occurs only months before Warleader begins. Now they have to make peace work if trillions of lives are to be saved. But Brit’s issues with the enemy are deeply personal. When she receives the news that she’s to command a ship crewed by Coalition (her side), Drakken (her former enemy), and newcomers from Earth (pains in the butt), she’s horrified. She still has trouble accepting that the war is over. She thinks peace is a fairy tale and diplomacy is the foolish choice of naïve politicians. To make matters worse, she’s forced to accept a Drakken and a former space pirate as her second in command. As if that isn’t bad enough, she’s attracted to him. Heh. Let the games begin!

Riley:  Thanks for that backstory Susan.  It really enhances the story.

Recently, I read a book that took place in post-WWI Europe that I found fascinating. The post-war setting of Warleader also interests me very much. What influenced your decision to place the Borderland series in that setting?

Susan:  Me too! Like you I’m a history buff. I’ve always been fascinated by the rocky periods after wars end. Former enemies now have to play nicely, forced to do so by peace treaties and politics, rules on paper attempting to govern people’s hearts. What if you’re not ready to forgive? I visited Estonia a few years ago. In a small store in the countryside, they were selling some rusted WW2 German helmets. With clear disdain, the owner used one in a dipping motion, telling us they weren’t that special: “We use them to shovel the ‘sheet’.” So seven decades later, there’s still hard feelings.

Riley:  When you are not flying or writing, what do you like to do?

Susan:  I am the caregiver for my 94 year-old dad, and savor family time and playing with the pets. I love to cook and read. I work out—love taking long walks on our hilly country roads. I’m a true homebody when not flying around the world.

Riley:  What books have you read recently that you really enjoyed?

Susan:  I just read two wonderful novels: The Great Alone by Kristin Hannah, and Where the Crawdads Sing by Delia Owens. Both are so good. On deck are some sci-fi romances—Inherit the Stars by Laurie Green, and the Edge of Eon by Anna Hackett!

Riley:  Can you tell us about what you are working on next?

Susan:  I am currently immersed in revising Borderlands 2 and Otherworldly Men 1, 2, and 3. For now, I’m not sure if I’ll publish Borderlands 3 or give it away for free. It’s less connected to the Borderlands world. I am leaning toward giving it to my newsletter subscribers after some revision, but we will see. I’d like to write more Borderlands stories. I’d love to continue the Lost Colony Series (The Last Warrior reverted to me recently as well—a mash-up of high fantasy and sci-fi romance.) So, I will be hard at work on all of this through next spring/early summer, releasing the books in rapid fashion one a month. It’s a worthwhile effort because it forms the foundation of the stories I want to write next in two different, unrelated series, Borderlands and Lost Colony. So! I’ll be busy!

About Warleader

The outlaw has taunted her in a galactic game of cat and mouse for years, but she never caught him. Now they’re supposed to make peace AND serve together on the same starship?

Not so easy to do when your sworn enemy turns out to be the hottest piece you’ve ever seen.

Warleader Finn Rorkken doesn’t care how many medals Admiral Brit Bandar has. He’s going to show her what it’s like to be pursued and caught by a master. Intergalactic peace is on the line, and if she wants his obedience, she’ll have to pay his price…

Challenge accepted, Admiral.

Welcome to the Borderlands, where rules are meant to be broken…

****************************

Links

Add Warleader to your Goodreads shelf:

Purchase Warleader:

 

****************************

About Susan Grant

Susan’s childhood dreams of becoming a space explorer fizzled when she found out calculus was involved. Luckily, she didn’t need math skills to fly jets—or to create space stories in her head, first for herself, then for friends, and now for readers everywhere.

A New York Times/USA Today bestselling author and a military veteran, Susan won the prestigious RITA® Award for her book Contact, a sci-fi aviation-thriller romance.

Find Susan at:

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/Author.Susan.Grant/

Twitter: https://twitter.com/flyerdreamer

Bookbub: https://www.bookbub.com/authors/susan-grant

Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/susangrant

Sign up for a FREE book –>https://susangrant.com/subscribe-to-susan-grants-newsletter/

Warleader (Borderlands, #1) by Susan Grant – Review

06 Thursday Dec 2018

Posted by WWMB in Book Review

≈ 10 Comments

Tags

4 stars, Book Review, post-war, scifi romance, series, space opera, Susan Grant

About Warleader by Susan Grant

The outlaw has taunted her in a galactic game of cat and mouse for years, but she never caught him. Now they’re supposed to make peace AND serve together on the same starship?

Not so easy to do when your sworn enemy turns out to be the hottest piece you’ve ever seen.

Warleader Finn Rorkken doesn’t care how many medals Admiral Brit Bandar has. He’s going to show her what it’s like to be pursued and caught by a master. Intergalactic peace is on the line, and if she wants his obedience, she’ll have to pay his price…

Challenge accepted, Admiral.

Welcome to the Borderlands, where rules are meant to be broken…

Based on the retired title Moonstruck, Warleader is an enemies-to-lovers sci-fi romance that sweeps readers into a galaxy-spanning adventure with action, laughter, and a few tears. Read this award-winning story today!

**********************

Review of Warleader

Here is what you need to know. In the aftermath of war, the Coalition, the Drakkon and Earth have formed the Triad Alliance. The diplomatic ship, Unity, is run by Admiral Brit Bandar and her second command, Drakkon Finn Rorken, a former Warleader. The crew is a combination of all three groups who work together to complete their mission. Wait, that’s a little bit of a lie. They don’t really work together all that well. Yet.

Clearly the admiral hates all Drakkon. There are early hints at some major Drakkon-induced trauma, but it won’t get explained until later in the book. So, right off, the heroine and the hero are on shaky ground. With a crew that also does not voluntarily get along, there are sure to be lots of loud and flashy fireworks on board Unity.

But right off, despite the admiral’s conviction that the only good Drakkon is a dead Drakkon, there is clearly some attraction to Finn. It’s a two-way attraction. Chemistry. What starts as a friendly competition in the gym will escalate to… well, use your imagination.

In the meantime, not everyone is happy the war is over and problems quickly put crew of Unity to work. Settlements are attacked by what appeared to be Drakkon based on the method of execution. Finn doesn’t believe it, but lack of evidence doesn’t help anyone’s version of the story.  The conflicting opinions of the Coalition and Drakkon make for some good drama.

There was one aspect of the investigation of these troubles that really bothered me.  During the investigation, there was an obvious group of offenders. There are events that happened that led me to believe this.  But they weren’t treated any differently than the other survivors that were found along the way.

I’d have thrown that group in the brig. There is no reason they couldn’t find some way to escape and then go on to cause more havoc, because that is what bad guys do. But Brit and Finn really blew it. They made their name during wartime, and their first inclination is diplomacy? Not buying it.

A couple of things in Warleader are unexplained for me. 1) Why does Finn look so much like Brit’s late husband Seff that she has to do a double-take? 2) How did Earth hook up with this Triad Alliance? As near as I can tell, they were not part of the war.

Warleader takes place in the aftermath of war that was not confined to one world. Spread out as it was, on planets and in space, it will probably take a long time to convince everyone to embrace the peace. I see the possibility of several plots in the Borderlands series. I truly enjoyed Warleader and I look forward to seeing where this adventure leads.

The author provided a copy of her book in exchange for an honest review.

**********************

Links

Add Warleader to your Goodreads shelf:

Purchase Warleader:

 

Star Hero: A Star Series Novella by Susan Grant – Review

30 Monday Oct 2017

Posted by WWMB in Book Review

≈ 6 Comments

Tags

5 stars, dogs, Hero Dogs, Pets in Space, scifi romance, series, Susan Grant

Review by Riley

*******************
About Star Hero

An imperfect hero battles his inner demons in a race against time to save the woman he loves…

First he had to rescue her. Then he’d try to win her back.

A Marine serving in the galactic frontier, Lieutenant Lukas Frank has a lot in common with a street dog named Bang-Bang; they both started off as scrappy orphans fighting to survive–and beat the odds. Things change when Bang-Bang leads Lukas to starpilot Captain Carlynn Riga. The tough war hero learns what it means to surrender–his heart. Lukas’s struggles with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, PTSD, threaten to tear the three of them apart, but nothing threatens them more than when Carlynn goes missing in action. Now the rugged, emotionally scarred Marine and his K-9 partner must find Carlynn and bring her home, or risk losing everything he has finally found worth fighting for.

(Expanded from the novella “Stray”, originally published in the Pets in Space 1 Anthology)

A note from the Author:
Star Hero is a stand-alone HEA novella in the world of the Star Series. It’s not necessary to read this one in series order (it contains no spoilers) but if you would like to know the suggested reading order, Star Hero takes place simultaneously with Star Champion (previously titled The Champion of Barésh) and after “The Prince, the Pilot, and the Puppy” from Embrace the Romance: Pets in Space 2. I hope you enjoy this latest installment in the Star Series!

*******************
Review of Star Hero

I first encountered this story in the original Pets in Space 1 Anthology. It was one of my favorites, so I was very please to be able to read the expanded version.

I loved the story of the scarred hero, Lukas, and the cheerful heroine, Carlynn, who get together with the push of a dog, Bang-Bang. It is practically love at first sight, but things get rocky when Lukas has problems with PTSD. Like any new relationship, the first glow of love is dimmed by real life issues and unless Lukas and Carlynn can work through them, there will be no HEA.

Who is the hero of the title? Star Hero is full of heroes/heroines. Bang-Bang, Carlynn and Lukas are all heroic in their own ways, each characters getting his or her own moment to shine.

Why did I connect with this book? There was one defining moment. It happened a bit later in the story. Carlynn, in an effort to distance herself from a fiance who is not dealing with his problems, takes on a mission away from the station. Lukas and Bang-Bang get left behind. Then this happens:

He bent down on one knee, and Bang-Bang’s paw hooked over his forearm. “She’s missing.” He managed to get the words out. Inconceivable words. It seemed surreal that he might never see Carylnn again. Might never hold her…

The softest of sorrowful, high-pitched whines exited Bang-Bang’s throat, and Lukas almost lost it. He pressed his check to Bang-Bang’s. Kindred spirits, they were.

I’ve had that experience too. My dog Cocoa, who missed her sister dog who had just died, came to me to get and to give comfort. That was 20 years ago, but I still remember that moment clearly. I imagine many people who have bonded with a dog have had a similar experience. The author’s depiction of that comforting bond between pet and human is something I connected with very strongly.

So read Star Hero for the romance, for the heroics or for the story of a special dog. All are great reasons! Then, then I recommend you check out the connected story in the anthology Embrace the Romance, Pets in Space 2: Susan Grant’s The Prince, the Pilot and the Puppy.

*******************

Links

Add Star Hero to your Goodreads shelf:

Purchase Star Hero or Embrace The Romance:

Note: for a little while longer, a portion of the proceeds from sales of Embrace the Romance will be donated to HeroDogs.org, who provides service dogs for US veterans.

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