Monday, July 18, 2022

Virtual Book Tour + #Giveaway: Last Star Standing by Spaulding Taylor @astmcveigh1 @GoddessFish


Last Star Standing

by Spaulding Taylor

GENRE: Thriller (speculative)


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?



Video for Last Star Standing: TikTok


Purchase Last Star Standing on Amazon


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


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.


 

Interview with Spaulding Taylor

Do you ever wish you were someone else? Who?

Yes! I wish I was Hilary Mantel and had won the Booker Prize twice (should have been THREE times – she was ROBBED!!! ROBBED!!! ROBBED!!!

Where was I? Um, yeah, Hilary Mantel.

Alternatively, Ursula le Guin. (Except for being dead.)



What did you do on your last birthday?

Wished I was younger. Not TOO much younger – I’d hate to be a teen again, or even what in Lord of the Rings is described as a “tween” (between 20 and 30). But 35 or so. Yeah. Let’s go with 35!



What part of the writing process do you dread?

Writing I always like. What I hate is editing, especially because I get my computer to read my books to me. Word’s readers sound like a cross between a bot and a mass-murderer, the British-accented ones, especially.

Soooooo they read my book to me and I try to catch mistakes, while I think about mass-murdering the bot reading it. Would love love love to lose this stage of writing, altogether.



Do you ever suffer from writer’s block? If so, what do you do about it?

No, instead I suffer from these two related ailments:

  1. hearing about my many fellow writers’ writer’s blocks and

  2. not having enough time to write everything I want to.

Number (2) is partly because my husband – a musicologist – and I have this great deal where we edit each other’s books. Which is kind of fine, and kind of not so fine, because he writes brilliant academic books about London concert life from the 1750 to 1950, which do my tiny head in, and I write much lighter stuff, thrillers and historical fiction, which he actually enjoys editing.

However, as any editor will tell you, editing anything really well takes time.



Tell us about your latest release.

Well, I’m in the process of writing the third in my six-book series of Austenesque books, which have already won multiple prizes. However, I’m just overwhelmed by the reception of my speculative thriller Last Star Standing, which I only wrote after losing a bet, which has so far won a Kirkus star, been joint runner-up in the Independent Press Awards, and made the finals of the Wishing Shelf Book Awards, the Eric Hoffer Book Awards, and is still currently a finalist for CIBA’s prestigious Cygnus Award.

And all this while I was busy writing/promoting my historical fiction! It’s as if Last Star Standing is a neglected but gifted eldest son, whose mother’s busy nurturing her twin baby girls, while he keeps on excelling…


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.

Connect with Alice (Spaulding Taylor) McVeigh

Website ~ Instagram ~ Twitter

Goodreads ~ LinkedIn ~ Pinterest ~ TikTok


Facebook:

Personal and Author Page


Amazon Author Page:

Amazon US Alice McVeigh, Spaulding Taylor

Amazon UKAlice McVeigh



Giveaway:

$50 Amazon/BN GC 




Follow the tour and comment; the more you comment, the better your chances of winning.


34 comments:

Anonymous said...

Thanks so much for featuring Last Star Standing - really honoured. All the best, Alice McVeigh/Spaulding Taylor

Bea LaRocca said...

Thank you for sharing your interview and book details (I am a fan of Ursula's work as well) and for offering a giveaway. The covert art is awesome and the synopsis and excerpt have intrigued me, Last Star Standing is going on my TBR!

Rita Wray said...

I liked the excerpt.

Stormy Vixen said...

Hello Alice, I enjoyed the interview and the excerpt, Last Star Standing sounds like a fantastic book for me to read and I like the cover! Good luck with your book and the tour! Thanks for sharing it with me and have a marvelous day!

Sherry said...

Looks like a very good book.

Anonymous said...

I love the artwork on the cover.

bn100 said...

nice cover

xjanelx78 said...

Really nice cover and excerpt, looking forward to reading this!

DVDgal75 said...

Great cover

xjanelx78 said...

What book are you currently reading?

xjanelx78 said...

What books do you recommend starting out with for your backlist?

xjanelx78 said...

Which of your characters do you relate to the most and why?

xjanelx78 said...

As a writer, what would you choose as your mascot/avatar/spirit animal?

xjanelx78 said...

How long on average does it take you to write a book?

xjanelx78 said...

How do you select the names of your characters?

xjanelx78 said...

What part of the book was the most fun to write?

xjanelx78 said...

What would you say is your interesting writing quirk?

xjanelx78 said...

If you could meet your characters, what would you say to them?

pippirose said...

The book sounds fascinating. Great cover!

xjanelx78 said...

What was one of the most surprising things you learned in creating your books?

xjanelx78 said...

Have you read any of the old classics? What did you think of them?

xjanelx78 said...

What do you think makes a good story?

xjanelx78 said...

What author do you look up to the most?

xjanelx78 said...

What book are you the most proud of writing?

xjanelx78 said...

What’s your favorite under-appreciated novel?

xjanelx78 said...

What is a significant way your book has changed since the first draft?

xjanelx78 said...

Hope you have a great Friday and weekend!

xjanelx78 said...

Do you have a favorite book you've written?

xjanelx78 said...

What comes first for you — the plot or the characters — and why?

xjanelx78 said...


Happy Monday, hope you have a wonderful week!

xjanelx78 said...

Can you share with us something about the book that isn’t in the blurb?

xjanelx78 said...

What inspired the idea for your book?

xjanelx78 said...

What characters in your book are most similar to you or to people you know?

xjanelx78 said...

What do you need in your writing space to help you stay focused?