Heroes, Finalists and Deadlines...

Daq-Cat, Miss Doozy Kitty and your truly want to extend our deepest appreciation to all heroes, past and present, today as here in the USA, it's Memorial Day: military personnel, law enforcement personnel, emergency medical personnel, emergency veterinary personnel. All those who put their lives on the line for unknown and other unseen others. We salute you, we honor you, we wish you and yours many blessings. We'd not have the life, the freedoms we do today but for your diligence and sacrifices. Thank you.

Shameless BSP: The Prism Award Finalists Are Announced!

Posted with permission:

"Jennette Heikes & Theresa Kovian are pleased to announce and congratulate our finalists in the Prism Contest in alphabetic order:

Dark Paranormal
Immortals: The Redeeming by Jennifer Ashley
Hotter After Midnight by Cynthia Eden
Mona Lisa Craving by Sunny

Erotica
A Mermaid's Kiss by Joey W. Hill
Carnal Desires by Crystal Jordan
Siren Singing by Isabo Kelly

Fantasy
The Dragon Master by Jennifer Ashley w/a Allyson James
Dragonborn by Jade Lee
King of Sword & Sky by C.L. Wilson

Futuristic
Fallen by Claire Delacroix
Moonstruck by Susan Grant
Shades of Dark by Linnea Sinclair

Light Paranormal
La Vida Vampire by Nancy Haddock
The Trouble with Moonlight by Donna MacMeans
Wicked Game by Jeri Smith-Ready

Novella
"The Spacetime Pool" by Catherine Asaro
"Dark Nest" by Leanna Renee Hieber
"Kung Fu Shoes!" in These Boots were Made for Stomping by Jade Lee

Time Travel
Twist by Colby Hodge
Madman's Dance by Jana G. Oliver
A Sexy Time of It by Cara Summers

Young Adult
Cave of Terror by Amber Dawn Bell
CHOSEN: A House of Night Novel by P.C. Cast
Sleepless by Terri Clark

Category winners and rankings, as well as the coveted Prism Statue Award, will be announced on July 16, 2009 in Washington D.C. at RWAR National and Fantasy, Futuristic & Paranormal Chapter at The Gathering.

Jennette Heikes, Co-coordinator for Dark Paranormal, Erotica, Novella & Time Travel

Theresa Kovian. Co-coordinator for Fantasy, Futuristic, Light Paranormal & Young Adult"

What I find so cool on a personal note is that I blurbed (ie: read the manuscript before publication for a quote/opinion) both MOONSTRUCK and FALLEN and totally loved both books!

I'm also jazzed to see Colby Hodge, Jade Lee, Donna MacMeans, Isabo Kelly, Catherine Asaro, C.L. Wilson and Leanne Renee Hieber on the list. Except for Donna, they were all part of either my Intergalactic Bar & Grille party or the SF/F panel at RT this year. Woot!

Now, back to work for me... (that's the deadlines part). ~Linnea

SHADES OF DARK, the sequel to Gabriel’s Ghost, July 2008 from RITA award-winning author, Linnea Sinclair, and Bantam Books: http://www.linneasinclair.com/

Something cascaded lightly through me—a gentling, a suffused glow. If love could be morphed into a physical element, this would be it. It was strength and yet it was vulnerability. It was all-encompassing and yet it was freedom. It was a wall of protection. It was wings of trust and faith.

It was Gabriel Ross Sullivan, answering the questions I couldn’t ask. Not that everything would be okay, but that everything in his power would be done, and we’d face whatever outcomes there were together.

Forbidden Relationships

Folks:

There's some kind of spice, a charge (or maybe discharge) of emotional tension in doing the forbidden, the naughty, the unexpected. It's like crossing a line, going on an adventure, taking a dare -- being proved "right" somehow.

There's an expectation that others' opinion of you will change. Why?

Doing something for the first time is a kind of loss of virginity - a loss of "innocence." It doesn't much matter what the thing is. Skiing down a legendary slope, killing someone (on purpose or running them over by accident), or having sex.

When you do something you've never done before, it changes you. So you expect others to change their opinion of you. In fact, one thing that drives people to cross those lines, the taboos, is dissatisfaction with their current reputation.

Some of the things we do change us in good ways, make us stronger, more self-reliant, more capable of handling the world so that we can shelter children. Such things would be oh, maybe your first solo drive in your Dad's car, writing your first check, your first use of a credit card, your first stay in a hotel by yourself, returning merchandise to a store because it's defective.

These are landmarks on the road to self-reliance and dependability.

There are all kinds of things we do for a "first time" -- and later they just seem of no moment.

But each thing we do, each action we take, changes us as well as the world.

Remember, King David, the warrior King of Israel who wrote the Psalms which were sung daily in the Temple (which then was a tent), was forbidden to build the stone Temple because he was a blooded warrior, however righteous. He was a great scholar, a brave and powerful man, an artist of renown -- but that one task was forbidden to him and left for his son, King Solomon.

I've been thinking about that for a long time -- why King David was not given to build the permanent Temple. What quality had he attained that disqualified him from this task?

So this last week I was privileged to read Susan Grant's forthcoming (May 25, 2008) Harlequin SF-Romance, MOONSTRUCK, Book I in her Borderlands Series.

I do hope it'll be a long series!!!

MOONSTRUCK explores the ways in which having sex changes a person -- the first time, and what it means to be the only virgin on a starship full of tough customers -- and a peculiar type of "first time" when a jaded Captain used to "only sex" falls in love for the second time in her life, and discovers the unique experience of making love instead of "just sex" is more disturbing than ever she could imagine -- because it is with her enemy, her nemesis, the symbol of all that's despicable in her world.

Oh, Star Trek fans will love Grant's BORDERLANDS series. It's just what we've all been waiting for.

This starship captain is a woman with a sexual appetite and a lust for definitive action. She's carrying a huge emotional load that leads her to obsessive behavior and has distanced herself from all human contact because of that. Now, all of that has to change - fast - because she's been given a new ship to command and a First Officer (you guessed it) who was her enemy, her nemesis, the symbol of all that's despicable in her world. But that was before the war ended.

The BORDERLANDS universe will be familiar to some of Grant's fans, but MOONSTRUCK is an independent study in the reconstruction of a society fragmented for centuries by war. This novel introduces you gently to the universe that is so fraught with complexity you will live in it for years to come.

In fact, the Borderlands saga may owe as much to the turmoil in the Middle East as it does to Star Trek -- it is Nation Building seen from within. And as I've been saying in almost all the Tarot posts last year, the glue that holds this whole world together is LOVE.

Grant takes us on a love-venture (loventure?) into a relationship forbidden by religious and cultural rules, and forbidden by the common sense rule of the Service that sexual relationships up and down the chain of command do more harm than good, and forbidden by emotional rules about sleeping with the enemy.

This starship captain has few qualms about "just sex" with anything male, enemies included (remind you of James Kirk?). So no harm done? Right? uh-oh.

But after it dawns on her that it ISN'T "just sex" -- what then?

Doing something forbidden may have a certain spice to it -- but afterwards, is it worth it? What are the consequences and upon whom does the toll fall? If the cost is only to yourself, then it's nobody else's business. But if it involves another - that's a problem. If it involves two interstellar civilizations, that's something else entirely.

But if it weren't "forbidden" then there wouldn't be any consequences, right? It's crossing the line of "forbidden" that causes all the trouble -- not the act itself. Hmmm?

Or are things "forbidden" because some ancient ancestors got into trouble doing that thing?

Well, then but that was then and this is now -- rules have to change, right? The "forbidden line" has to move from generation to generation. No?

So we have to figure out what should or should not be forbidden in our own time. From scratch.

Should nothing be forbidden?

Should no action disqualify you for some other opportunity?

Is there some logic or reasoning that can be applied to select what taboos a culture needs?

Grant's first novel in her Borderlands Series could be viewed as a 3 of Swords process where the actions are crossing the lines of the forbidden, thus closing some options (as 3 Swords always does) and opening others.

See my August to December Tuesday posts for the 20 Tarot posts.

Live Long and Prosper,
Jacqueline Lichtenberg