Spotlight & Giveaway: Entropy by Jess Anastasi

Today it is my pleasure to Welcome author Jess Anastasi to HJ!

Hi Jess and welcome to HJ! We’re so excited to chat with you about your new release, Entropy!

Tell us about the book with this fun little challenge using the title of the book:

Extreme – because when it comes to Qaelan Forster, there is no middle ground
No – Cami is very good at telling Qae no when other people usually don’t.
Trouble – what Qae thought Cami looked like when he first saw her.
Right – Qae was totally right, Cami turned out to be trouble. The kind with handcuffs.
Opinion – Cami will give hers to Qae whether he likes it or not.
Personal Space – Qae does not understand the meaning of.
Yes – Qae has finally met his match and no one has any sympathy for him.
 

Please share the opening lines of this book:

In and out. That’d been the plan. Of course, the plan had gone to shite about two minutes after they’d stepped off the Ebony Winter.

Please share a few Fun facts about this book…

• During the first rounds of edits, I suddenly decided to re-write the entire middle of the book (there’s a whole other story floating around on my computer, kind of like an alternate reality version of events) lucky my editor loves me so much
• Cami was one of those characters who just came to me fully formed and I didn’t have any trouble writing her at all.
• Qae comes out with some truly weird and ridiculous swear words and euphemisms, like “hell in a hankie.” My editor asked where they all came from but the truth is, I have no idea. I never knew what the heck Qae was going to say when I was writing him.
• For all intents and purposes, Qae is a space pirate but he really hates it when people call him that, so I never mentioned it once in the entire book.
• Rian and Ella go through some truly amazing development in this book that even I didn’t see coming until I was writing it!

Was there a scene in this book that was harder to write than others?

There was this one scene that wasn’t difficult in the technical sense, but it was a moment of extreme vulnerability for Qae, so I wanted to make sure I did him and the memory that’d been exposed (that is kind of the foundation of who he is) justice when I wrote it, if that makes sense.

“I couldn’t believe in anything the IPC stood for. I resigned my commission as soon as I could, got my payout for services rendered, and bought the first half-decent ship I could get my hands on. Ebony, the girl I’d smuggled off Siraj, came with me, of course. She had nowhere else to go. What neither of us realized was that she was already sick—beyond saving, sick. She had tuberculosis, but by the time she was diagnosed, even all the modern medicine in the universe couldn’t save her.”
“My god,” she breathed, horrified that someone could die from such a preventable disease in this day and age. “I didn’t even realize TB still existed. I thought it was eradicated centuries ago.”
“There are whole epidemics of it in the outer systems where they don’t have access to decent medical care.” He gestured at the hull. “Ebony painted this in the weeks before she died. I took her to my home planet of Dalphin, and we landed on this lakeshore where the sun set over the water every night. The day she died was the first day of winter, and she made me promise never to forget her or her mother. She wasn’t scared of dying, she was scared of being forgotten.”
Cami had to bite her lower lips as tears started stinging her eyes, because she could clearly see in his gaze how this still hurt him, that his own eyes were brimming with moisture. No wonder he’d never wanted anyone to touch the
hull of his ship.
“I’m sorry, Qae.” She couldn’t get the words out above a whisper, and they seemed so completely inadequate to what he’d been through. Now she understood why he chose to live outside of IPC law. “Obviously I didn’t know Ebony, but I’m sure she’d understand why you have to do this. As much as you probably don’t want to hear this, it’s not about the image itself, it’s about keeping her memory, which I know you’ll do anyway.”
“It probably sounds stupid, but by keeping the painting, knowing it was Ebony’s hands that made each brush stroke, it was like keeping a physical connection to her. Like she was still with me all the time, watching over me. I always felt if the image was painted over or replaced, it would be like cutting that final tie to her, and she’d really be gone forever.”
There seemed to be something else behind his words, leaving her with only one logical guess.
“Did you love her?” she asked gently.
“In a way. We were just kids. I was barely a year older than her. For a while, before I realized how sick she was, I used to think she was my forever. But it was probably naive. Even if she’d lived, we probably would have gone our separate ways eventually.”

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
 

What do you want people to take away from reading this book?

I just hope they enjoy Qae’s particular personality as much as I did when I was writing him.

Thanks for blogging at HJ!

Giveaway: eBook copy of ENTROPY (Atrophy) by Jess Anastasi

To enter Giveaway: Please complete the Rafflecopter form and Post a comment to this Q: If you could go to outer space in the future, would you rather visit a planet or a huge space station?

a Rafflecopter giveaway

 
 

Book Info:

Captain Qaelan Forster is used to trouble. He lives on the wrong side of the law and he’s on the most-wanted lists. He’s mixed up in his cousin’s mess who has problems on a cosmic level—like shape-shifting aliens who want them dead. But Qaelan’s not prepared for the cheeky kind of trouble called Camille Blackstone, whose infamous father has any man interested in his daughter executed.

After Camille drags Qaelan into an impulsive act of rebellion, she finds herself trying to defend the sexy captain from her overprotective father’s wrath, even if she has to handcuff herself to the sexy captain to keep him alive. However, it soon becomes apparent there are much more dangerous things lurking in the dark corners of the universe than a vengeful pirate lord. And she’s just landed in the middle of it.