celiabreslin

Hi Blog Friends!

I’m wrapping up my angel romantasy WiP this month and looking forward to seeing my family for U.S. Thanksgiving in a few weeks. I’ll likely share some holiday recipes with you soon, but for today, let’s blast off into the cosmos. My author friend M. Luke McDonell has a new science fiction release, and it’s packed with fascinating sci-fi tech toys, along with a suspenseful storyline and characters you’ll root for as they navigate the dangers of their world.

Life seems perfect on corporate-owned planet Victoria… until it isn’t. Betrayed… Blacklisted…

Social engineer Mia Julian has a secret—a valuable ability she hides from planet Victoria’s seamless surveillance system while she fills her life with work, shallow friendships, and one-night stands.

Then she’s unjustly fired from her corporate job.

Finding work with a sketchy security firm, Mia soon discovers she isn’t the only one with a secret.

Her new team of Earth ex-pats should never have passed Victoria’s rigorous screening process, nor should their anxious clients need protection in a place that promises *zero* crime.

And yet…

With surveillance drones and bugs stalking her every move, and strangers literally tossing her into danger zones, Mia must race to uncover the truth about her planet and society… since both seem to want her dead.

Amazon | Kobo | Apple

SIX – Excerpt

[What to do when a childrens’ party goes horribly, horribly wrong…]

Mia wasn’t sure what she was supposed to be doing. […] A little boy — Tad Lee, she knew from the guest list — tugged at her skirt and said he had to go to the potty. Where was his nanny?

She bent to tell him where the bathroom was when a small red dart resembling a fishing lure flew past her face and lodged in the wall. Who the hell gives a six-year-old real darts as a present? She had no time to locate the culprit before a similar dart bit into her shoulder. She gasped in surprise and pain. Before she could pluck it out, it dissolved.

What the hell?

Tad Lee yelped. A dart quivered in his cheek before dissolving as hers had. Was this a toy or something else? Hot air pushed through the air-conditioned coolness of the room. The large, sliding glass window above the dining room table was open.

That isn’t right. The house is supposed to be sealed.

Mikey must have seen it at the same time because he pounded into the room and slid the window shut with a bang. Nothing in or out of the house included no open windows or doors.

Tad’s hold on her skirt loosened, and he wobbled and fell to the floor. She knelt beside him and saw a classic red ring forming around a purpling bull’s-eye on his cheek where the dart had struck. He’d been bitten or stung. It didn’t make sense, but a lifetime of training told her it was true. This is what it looked like when the deadliest insects on Victoria struck.

The darts held venom.

She tried to pick him up, belatedly realizing her right arm had gone numb and that her shoulder displayed the same red ring.

Fuck.

She wouldn’t panic. She had an antivenom kit in her bag, which was, double fuck, outside the house. The numbness spread down her right side, and her pounding heart slowed.

This is bad.

She didn’t have much time. Tad had less. No one in the chaotic room noticed things had gone very wrong.

She hoisted Tad with her good arm and stumbled to the foyer. By now her right arm was completely numb. Tad hung limp in her grasp.

Not again, she thought. Please. Not again.

Lucas caught up with her. “What’s wrong with him?”

“Antivenom kit,” she croaked. “My purse. Outside.”

He fumbled with the physical lock, but couldn’t open it, coded as it was to Mia’s palm.

“Take him,” she said, and Lucas gingerly lifted Tad from her. She grasped her limp right wrist, pressed her hand to the lock, and it unlatched. Lucas pulled the door open. Mia stumbled into the rock garden to the right of the door, sitting heavily on the rounded stones. They should have burned but felt only warm.

“Annabelle, give me Mia’s bag.”

He dumped it out and thankfully, seemed to have learned how to use the kit. He pressed the device to Tad’s arm. The lights on the face of it flashed and danced a pattern she’d never seen, not in any of the training holos. She heard the hiss of multiple hypos. Was the kit malfunctioning? A green light meant the toxin had been identified, the orange light below, that the antidote had been administered. They both flashed over and over again.

“Multiple toxins,” he said under his breath. “Paramedic drones are on the way. What happened?” he asked Mia. “Did a swarm of insects fly in?”

“It wasn’t a bug,” Mia whispered. “Someone shot darts in through the window. There’s one stuck in the wall. The ones that hit us disappeared.”

“Us? You’re hit too? Why didn’t you tell me? Annabelle, do you have a kit?”

She did. Lucas handed Tad to her. “Take him into the shade.”

He knelt beside Mia and held the antivenom kit against her arm. It flashed the same staccato pattern. Mia blinked. It was getting harder to focus. Was she going to die?

Happy Reading!
xo,
Celia