BLURB:
The Chronicles of Deneb is a science-fiction/ space opera series set in the near future. The year is 2080 CE. The world is dying. Get ready to travel into the future to a time when nothing is certain. Where the science behind climate change was ignored, leading to drought and famine plaguing an already overpopulated globe. Massive waves of refugees stream across the planet, seeking sanctuary. Where terrorist groups have joined forces with biohackers to develop a deadly bio-engineered disease that marches across the continents like a conquering army, leaving millions dead in its murderous swathe.
Meanwhile, some of the best and brightest minds on the planet are feverishly at work – constructing gigantic Space Arks to shuttle hundreds of thousands of people to a colony on Mars. And it seems like there’s more good news: world leaders announce that a vaccine is ready. It’s all good; it’s all returning to normal.
But the truth is very different. In THE FLIGHT OF THE MAYFLOWER, the first novel in The Chronicles of Deneb, Dr. Daniel Radu – project manager for NASA’s Space Ark Mayflower – uncovers a global conspiracy of immense proportions. But Daniel cooks up a scheme of his own. Joined by a team of global experts, he and his colleagues brace themselves for a journey of a lifetime as they trek across the galaxy in a quest for survival.
Mayhem follows the Mayflower in the second book of The Chronicles of Deneb series, DESCENT INTO DARKNESS. Journey along with the crew of the Space Ark Mayflower as they adapt to their new home on the planet Deneb. But along with their struggle to integrate into an alien culture, a new battle sweeps across the planet with the arrival of the human-transmitted Chimera bactovirus, bringing war and fanning the flames of racial intolerance. With a bloody conflict now raging across the planet, the crew of the Mayflower is split between the two factions and embroiled in the chaos and destruction.
FIRES OF FURY is the third installment in The Chronicles of Deneb. Will the survivors of the Space Ark Mayflower find their way when cultures clash and the fires of fury threaten to consume their lives? Now masquerading as citizens of the Collective, the Mayflower crew has a new reason to fear. With the end of the Second Denebian War, Wesselan’s General Pallav Kóbor and his astrophysicist wife, Dr. Tara Kóbor, have high hopes that life will return to normal on Deneb7. Yet nothing can be further from the truth.In a diabolical plot to erase the scars left by the Second Denebian War, warlord turned Wessel Head of State Gomalan unleashes a fiendish scheme to heal his nation’s wounds, while his top soldier, General Ravenna, falls under the spell of a seductive Fyjer agent intent on crushing their ambitions. Dragged into a brutal reality of terror and intrigue, can the Kóbors and warbird ace Fynn Vogel remain unscathed, or will the flames consume them and all that is evil on Deneb-7?
~~~~~~~~~~~~~
EXCERPT:
A willowy brunette with shining brown eyes burst from the shadows, almost scaring Daniel out of his skin. “Tara,” he gasped, trying to quiet his heart. “What the hell? The president’s due here any second.” Dr. Tara Kóbor, the Nobel-prize winning astrophysicist who had discovered the find of the century – an Earth-like planet cuddled up in the Goldilocks zone of its star – was wearing a grin as wide as the Grand Canyon.
“You heard the news, right? I mean, the broadcasts are on fire. They’ve developed a vaccine! And whoever’s on the first shuttle flight is top priority. That means…”
He could hear heavy footsteps pounding on the hangar floor: time to play show and tell. Taking her by the shoulder, Daniel shepherded his friend to the bulkhead door. “It means you gotta get outta here. We’ll celebrate later,” he promised.
Just then, a bevy of bodyguards swooped in, all earpieces and dark glasses, and Daniel stood back as they robotically carried out their duties. No need really, NASA’s Chief of Security had seen to that. Out of the corner of his eye, Daniel spotted Tara’s husband, Lt-Col Pallav Kóbor, dwarfing the president’s team as he walked them through the hangar. He could hear the click click click of the cameras as the president approached with his staff trailing behind like good little shadows.
Show time, he mumbled to himself, wiping the sweat from his palms on his cobalt-blue NASA tunic.
AUTHOR
Since the days of the Napoleonic War, there has always been a member of Zanne’s family in uniform. Choosing to follow in the footsteps of her ancestors, Zanne joined the Canadian Armed Forces in 1980, and was selected to attend the Royal Military College of Canada – the first year that women were accepted into that prestigious academy of learning. After graduation, she studied to become a Transportation and Movements Officer in the Royal Canadian Air Force.
During a career spanning 38 years, some of the most memorable experiences involved command of 8 Mission Support Squadron as part of Joint Task Force Afghanistan, leading a study on support to the Canadian Arctic involving several trips to Northern Canada, including Canadian Forces Station Alert (the most northern settlement in the world), a three-year tour with NATO at Joint Force Command Brunssum, a deployment as the NATO Liaison Officer to United States Central Command, and finally a nomination as the Deputy Commander for the Canadian Forces Recruiting Group.
After hanging up the uniform and putting away the combat boots, Zanne bought a small acreage in Central Ontario and designed her own house. With a cozy office overlooking the shores of Georgian Bay, she decided to pursue her life-long ambition: to become an author. Enough of the reports and returns that littered her desk over her career, now she could turn her attention to unleashing the creativity that had taken a back seat. The time had come to shake the dust off begin a new career. The winds of change had called.
Zanne is currently crafting The Chronicles of Deneb, a sci-fi space opera series that will take the reader from a dystopian earth on a voyage across the universe in search of a safe haven. But trouble is in store for them when the planet they land on is anything but the sanctuary they sought.
When not behind the keyboard, Zanne enjoys travel, photography, hiking, and gardening. And always, a good story to pass the time.
LINKS
PRESSKIT: https://bit.ly/3U4OenB
WEBSITE: https://www.zanneraby.com/
FACEBOOK: https://www.facebook.com/zanne.raby
LINKEDIN: https://www.linkedin.com/in/zanne-raby-2b4a9b1bb/
INSTAGRAM: https://www.instagram.com/zanne_raby/
PURCHASE VIA: https://ridgecrestbooks.com/ AND https://amzn.to/3fiZy0m
GUEST POST
What was your inspiration for writing the series The Chronicles of Deneb?
I’m going to say right up front that I never set out to write a sci-fi series. I had just left the Air Force after a long career and I was living near a military training centre that specialized in chemical, biological, radiological and nuclear warfare – the CBRN Academy. One day I was shopping at the local mall and I ran into a captain who worked at the school. I knew him from years back. We got chatting and he told me about an ex-Soviet officer who wrote a few books on experiments with biological agents – his specialty was anthrax. His whole life was devoted to weaponizing anthrax and other biological agents. I read both of the books and I thought, yup, this gives me the seed to grow a pretty good work of fiction. This was the inspiration for a plot that begins with a bio-hacker created Chimera pandemic. Now again, I should mention that this was in 2018, so a full year or more before COVID-19. But that one meeting in the local mall gave me the inspiration to begin writing the first novel in the series. That novel became The Flight of the Mayflower, and it begins in the not-so-distant future of 2080.
Talk about your favorite kind of character to write about.
My favourite character is one who appears to be someone totally different than he or she actually is. The kind of person who dons a mask in public, but in private the true spirit comes out. In The Chronicles of Deneb, Pallav Kóbor is a military security officer working for an alien general. See, there’s the military theme that I so easily relate to! Kóbor’s a big tough guy. He can be devious and vengeful and he’s loyal to the core. But under the tough-guy skin, he’s also a loving father who’s ready to give up his conscience to keep his family safe. Kóbor fights his inner demons when he is alone, but when he steps into his uniform, he becomes the man with the iron heart.
Talk about your least favorite kind of character to write about.
I really don’t have a least favourite kind of character. It is tough sometimes to write about certain types of personalities. For example, my series is a space opera/ sci-fi and in it I have a couple of engineers and scientists working on projects that are way out there. To be even a bit realistic, I need to do a ton of research. This makes it harder to write the character, but that doesn’t mean they are any less of my darlings.
Can you, for those who don’t know you already, tell me something about yourself and how you became an author?
Ah, the bio. I come from a military family. Every generation had a connection to the army or air force. This goes way, way back. For hundreds of years, there was someone in my family in uniform. I served in the air force for 38 years. I had an amazing career, with ups and downs. I got to travel the world, work with people from many nations, and I made great friendships. But everything comes to an end, and after my retirement I felt a bit at loose ends. I thought about what I enjoyed doing before I joined the military and the answer was writing. It was always writing, even when I served… although I never published anything I wrote. That’s when I thought to myself, “I’ve got a story to tell and I can do it!” It took me two years to finish my first novel but then I was intimidated to publish. I contacted an agent and she mentioned to me it usually takes about a year and a half to get a reply from a publisher. That pushed me right over the deep end. I finally finished writing a book and I’d have to wait that long! No way… so Kindle Direct Publishing became my friend and voila! I became an independent author-publisher.
How did you come up with the name of this book?
So I have three novels out at the moment and (glimpse into the future) there’s a fourth that I’m working on right now. The first novel I wrote is The Flight of the Mayflower. It was hard to come up with a name for the book, but I began to think about what was happening on the pages. There is a catastrophe that propels a team of scientists and engineers (plus their families of course!) to take off into space to find a habitable planet and they leave on the Space Ark Mayflower. Like the Pilgrims of the 1600s, the crew of the Space Ark is leaving their home base and venturing off into the unknown. They are fleeing a dying Earth. And lastly, the manuscript was completed in 2020, which was the 400th anniversary of the arrival of the Pilgrims to North America. What better name than The Flight of the Mayflower?
I named the series The Chronicles of Deneb since the major action takes place on the alien planet Deneb-7, which is inhabited by an advanced humanoid species that belongs to the Interstellar Collective of Peace and Security. This is a group of planets that hosts sophisticated life forms, the majority of which are humanoid.
Convince us why you feel your book is a must-read.
In my humble opinion, no book is a must-read. Some people will gravitate towards romance, others to horror novels and a different set to fantasy and sci-fi. If you enjoy traditional science fiction/ space opera such as Lost in Space, you’ll certainly find The Flight of the Mayflower, Descent into Darkness and Fires of Fury, all great reads. Packed with action, there’s a little bit of everything: conspiracy, revenge, romance, and epic battle scenes. Travel along with the powerful, battle-hardened General Ravenna when she goes up against a cunning, seductive enemy spy. Grate your teeth in frustration as Provost Marshal Pallav Kóbor mentors his wild, crazy young assistant, Captain Bafa Villutomi. You can soar through the air in a warbird with Major Fynn Vogel as he annihilates the enemy. Discover Dr. Daniel Radu’s brilliant engineering solutions to the problems the human refugees face as they integrate into a very alien society. If you yearn to travel to foreign locales, get ready to be swept away by the majestic alien landscapes and exotic peoples of Deneb and the other planets in the Collective.
December 5: Christine Young
December 6: Lady Hawkeye
December 7: The Avid Reader
December 8: Long and Short Reviews
December 9: It’s Raining Books
December 12: Author Deborah A Bailey
December 13: Jerry’s Circumlocution
December 14: Kit ‘N Kabookle
December 15: Guatemala Paula Loves to Read – review only
December 16: Fabulous and Brunette
December 26: Sandra’s Book Club
December 27: Literary Gold
December 28: Sybrina’s Book Blog
December 29: All the Ups and Downs
December 29: Lisa Haselton’s Reviews and Interviews
December 30: Westveil Publishing
GIVEAWAY
$25 Amazon / BN GC
HOSTED BY
