NBTM Virtual Book Tour + #Giveaway: In Between: Stories of the Eververse by Darby Harn @DarbyHarn @GoddessFish

In Between: Stories of the Eververse

by Darby Harn

GENRE: Speculative Fiction

BLURB:

Telepathic wolves. Zombie gangsters. Sentient houses. Just another day for Kit Baldwin.

Fifty years after an alien ship crashed in Break Pointe, the only protection in a strange new world is Great Power, a corporation of superhumans. If you can afford them. Most people can’t.

Enter Kit Baldwin, a young woman who helps people to help people. Except her power is the alien’s power, and she may be more of a danger to her city than she is a help.

This collection of stories and novellas follows Kit's journey in a series that's been called 'the next logical step after Watchmen.'

Purchase In Between: Stories of the Eververse on Amazon

Excerpt:

Starter Home

1. Reality

Someone keeps rewriting reality. Mostly it goes like this: one minute I’m talking to Abi about things we’ll never do, like go to New Zealand or just go to bed at the same time and then she disappears along with the rest of what passes for my life these days.

I write this to make some record. A way back.

2. Honestly, It’s Not That Different

Strange things happen around here.

There isn’t any life for me outside of waiting for the next shoe to drop, so I wasn’t too bothered at first. Now it happens all the time. On and off. In and out. Hours. Days. Minutes. Reality like summer floods. The strange always recedes back to a big, three story house on Severin St. American castle. Picture window.

Picture perfect.

Milk trucks inch down the street, lined with ’67 Chevys. Pig-tailed white girls swish in yards with hula-hoops. Boys play stickball in the middle of the street. Cops patrol the neighborhood, and keep black girls from smudging the frosted scenery in midtown.

The cop points back toward the fringes of downtown. “You took a wrong turn back there.”

I zip open my leather jacket. Crimson light illuminates the shock on the cop’s face. “Tell me about it.”

He takes off running. There’s a reason I know when reality changes. My reality is out of sorts, too. TL/DR: if I touch someone, I acquire their energy. Consciousness. They go into the jar of this glowing alien crystal suspended within my chest. Entire universes reside there. Infinite realities. Plus, I’m half-Irish, so.

The doors are always open.

Interview with Darby Harn

How did you become involved with the subject or theme of your book?

A lot of themes thread through In Between: Stories of the Eververse. The one I think emerges for me at least is the conflict between who you are and who you think you are. Kit Baldwin fights to preserve herself against the evasive alien force of The Ever, whose power she’s fused with.

That takes on different forms in the book and due to the nature of The Ever’s power, different people. As an autistic person, I struggle a lot with masking. It’s mostly unconscious and until I was aware of it, dictated parts of my life I wasn’t even aware of. In a lot of ways Kit’s struggle with The Ever and all the people contained within it mirror my struggle with masking who we are to fit into neurotypical situations. In the short term it might benefit you in the sense you get through a conversation. Over a lifetime, it takes a toll.

What were your goals and intentions in this book, and how well do you feel you achieved them?

My only real intent was to return to telling stories about Kit Baldwin. The first three novels of the Eververse series each feature a different POV character. When I got to the end of Book 3, Nothing Ever Ends, I really missed Kit. These stories and novellas became a way to reconnect with her. They also became a way to further explore the sandbox I’m building in the Eververse. A lot of new characters and concepts emerge in the book. These stories represent some of my best writing and I hope readers feel the same.

What was the hardest part of writing this book?

The hardest part by far was acknowledging Kit’s autism. I struggled with acknowledging this myself. I work everything out through writing it seems like and Kit became a way of me dealing with it on the page. Other people deal with this more successfully and easily it seems, but for me, it took a lot to get here.

Returning to her allowed me to continue this journey of self discovery that I’ve been on the last five years or so. All the main characters reflect some facet of autism in a metaphorical sense, but I found a way of understanding myself through Kit.

What did you enjoy most about writing this book?

I love the Bloodbacks. The Bloodbacks are a pack of telepathic wolves Kit encounters in Break Pointe in the novella (appropriately titled) Bloodback. They become a meaningful part of the world and also her story in ways I didn’t anticipate. I also loved experimenting with form. In Troubled Graves I use a little comic book script format. In Starter Home I play around with structure.

Were there alternate endings you considered?

I contemplated a few different versions of the ending in the book. Though it’s a collection of stories and novella, the three novellas in the book are linked. The end of third novella took on a few different shapes as I worked on the book over the last few years. As my understanding of myself evolved, so did the ending. I won’t say too much about it as it has major ramifications for the rest of the little universe I’m building out, but I’m curious to know what people think.

What genre of books do you enjoy reading?

I love reading all kinds of books. I love literary fiction, so I’m reading That Old Country Music by Kevin Barry right now. I also love sci-fi and fantasy so I’m reading Azura Ghost by Essa Hansen and Voices of the Banished by Shelly Campbell.

AUTHOR Bio and Links:

Darby Harn studied at Trinity College, in Dublin, Ireland, as part of the Irish Writing Program. He is the author of the sci-fi superhero novel EVER THE HERO. His short fiction appears in Strange Horizons, Interzone, Shimmer, The Coffin Bell and other venues.

Connect with Darby Harn

Website ~ Amazon ~ Goodreads ~ Twitter ~ Facebook

 

Giveaway:

$25 Amazon/BN GC 

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