PROMO: The Dragon Eater

J. Scott Coatsworth has a new queer YA/Crossover Sci-Fantasy book out – The Dragon Eater, Tharassas Cycle book one. There’s a giveaway, and a free book with purchase too!

Raven’s a thief who just swallowed a dragon. A small one, sure, but now his arms are growing scales, the local wildlife is acting up, and his snarky AI familiar is no help whatsoever.

Raven’s best friend Aik is a guardsman carrying a torch for the thief. A pickpocket and a guard? Never going to happen. And Aik’s ex-fiancé Silya, an initiate priestess in the midst of a magical crisis, hates Raven with the heat of a thousand suns.

This unlikely team must work together to face strange beasts, alien artifacts, and a world-altering threat. If they don’t figure out what to do soon, it might just be the end of everything.

Things are about to get messy.

About the Series:

The Tharassas Cycle is a four book sci-fantasy series set on the recently colonized world of Tharassas. When humans first arrived on planet, they thought they were alone until the hencha mind made itself known. But now a new threat has arisen to challenge both humankind and their new allies on this alien world.

Preorder and Get the Prequel Free

I’m giving away the prequel, Tales From Tharassas, with all preorders – it contains The Last Run, The Emp Test, and a brand new short story the Fallen Angel. Just order the book and email me a proof of purchase at scott@jscottcoatsworth.com, and I’ll send you the book on release day (March 16th).

Universal Buy Link

---

Giveaway

Scott is giving away a $20 book gift card with this reveal – your choice of Amazon, B&N, Kobo or Smashwords. Enter for a chance to win:

a Rafflecopter giveawayhttps://widget-prime.rafflecopter.com/launch.js

Direct Link: http://www.rafflecopter.com/rafl/display/b60e8d47276/?

---

Excerpt

Spin’s voice echoed in his ear. “This is a bad idea, boss.”

“Shush,” Raven whispered to his familiar.

He needed to concentrate. Cheek and jowl against the smooth cobblestones, he held his breath and prayed to the gods that no one had seen him duck under the sea master’s ornate carriage. The setting sun cast long shadows from a pair of boots so close to his face that the dust and leather made him want to sneeze. Their owner was deep in conversation with the sea master, the hem of her fine mur silk trousers barely visible. The two women’s voices were hushed, and he could only make out the occasional word.

Raven rubbed the old burn scar on his cheek absently, wishing they would go away.

“Seriously, boss. I’m not from this world, and even I know it’s a bad idea to steal from the sea master.”

Though only he could hear Spin’s voice, Raven wished the little silver ay-eye would just shut up.

The hencha cloth-wrapped package in the carriage above was calling to him. He’d wanted it since he’d first seen it through the open door. No, needed it. Like he needed air, even though he had no idea what was inside. He scratched the back of his hand hard to distract himself from its disturbing pull.

An inthym popped its head out of the sewer grate in front of him, sniffing the air. Raven glared at the little white rodent, willing it to go away. Instead, the cursed thing nibbled at his nose.

Raven sneezed, then covered his mouth. He held his breath, staring at the boots. Don’t let them hear me.

A shiny silver feeler poked out of his shirt pocket, emitting a golden glow that illuminated the cobblestones underneath him. “Boss, you all right?” Spin’s whisper had that sarcastic edge he often used when he was annoyed. “Your heart rate is elevated.”

“Be. Quiet.” Raven gritted his teeth. Spin had the worst sense of timing.

The woman — one of the guard, maybe? — and the sea master stepped away, their voices fading into the distance.

Raven said a quick prayer of thanks to Jor’Oss, the goddess of wild luck, and flicked the inthym back into the sewer. “Shoo!”

He popped his head out from under the carriage to take a quick look around. There was no one between him and the squat gray Sea Guild headquarters. It was time. Grab it and go.

He reached into the luxurious carriage — a host of mur beetles must have spent years spinning all the red silk that lined the interior — and snagged the package. He hoped it was the treasury payment for the week. If so, it should hold enough coin to feed an orphanage for a month, and he knew just the one. “Got it.”

“Good. Now get us out of here.”

A strange tingling surged through his hand. Raven frowned.

Must have pinched a nerve or something.

Ignoring it, he stuck the package under his arm, slipped around the carriage, and set off down Gullton’s main thoroughfare. He walked as casually as he could, hoping no one would notice the missing package until he was long gone.

“We clear?”

Spin’s feeler blinked red. “No. Run! They’ve seen you.”

Raven ran.

---

Author Bio

Scott lives with his husband Mark in a yellow bungalow in Sacramento. He was indoctrinated into fantasy and sci fi by his mother at the tender age of nine. He devoured her library, but as he grew up, he wondered where all the people like him were.

He decided that if there weren’t queer characters in his favorite genres, he would remake them to his own ends.

A Rainbow Award winning author, he runs Queer Sci Fi, QueeRomance Ink, and Other Worlds Ink with Mark, sites that celebrate fiction reflecting queer reality, and is the committee chair for the Indie Authors Committee at the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America (SFWA).

Author Website: https://www.jscottcoatsworth.com

Author Facebook (Personal): https://www.facebook.com/jscottcoatsworth/

Author Facebook (Author Page): https://www.facebook.com/jscottcoatsworthauthor

Author Twitter: https://twitter.com/jscoatsworth

Author Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/jscottcoatsworth/

Author Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/8392709.J_Scott_Coatsworth

Author Mastodon: https://mastodon.otherworldsink.com/@jscottcoatsworth

Author Liminal Fiction (LimFic.com): https://www.limfic.com/mbm-book-author/j-scott-coatsworth/

Author QueeRomance Ink: https://www.queeromanceink.com/mbm-book-author/j-scott-coatsworth/

Author Amazon: http://www.amazon.com/J.-Scott-Coatsworth/e/B011AFO4OQ

PROMO: Thorns of Chaos

Jeremiah Cain has a new MM fantasy romance out: Thorns of Chaos. And there’s a giveaway.

“Cain crafts a vivid world … rich with detail and myth-lore that traipses brightly through the darker themes of oppression and suffering.” –BookLife Reviews

Queer Grimdark Fantasy: Finn is no hero, chosen born, or noble. Despite escalating tensions from the Dayigan soldier’s occupation of Feah lands, the happy-go-lucky twenty-five-year-old is content to spend his days fishing and flirting with the other men in his Celtic-like village. But everything changes at their midyear’s eve festival when an angry Dayigan commander catches Finn in the arms of another man. Suddenly framed for murder, he must flee his village or face death.

However, Finn isn’t the Dayigans’ only target. They believe all Feahs are wicked and intend to destroy them by any means necessary. The Feahs’ one hope of stopping the reign of terror is to find a relic forged by dark faeries and able to control chaos magic-and claim it to protect themselves. With the fate of the Feah lands resting on his shoulders, Finn seeks out sorcerers who practice ancient, forbidden magic.

Instead, he finds love with the handsome but fierce head of the sorcerers–and a power he never knew he could possess.

But when the Dayigans strike, can Finn harness the perilous magic to save his people without losing himself in the process?

Warnings: violence, sexual content, harsh language, homophobia, major character death

Universal Buy Link

---

Giveaway

Jeremiah is giving away a $20 Amazon gift card with this tour:

a Rafflecopter giveawayhttps://widget-prime.rafflecopter.com/launch.js

Direct Link: http://www.rafflecopter.com/rafl/display/b60e8d47278/?

---

Excerpt

Finn jumped up from the shore and spread his wings before pushing them down to gain lift.

He kept a low flight of about thirty feet and could see their village as he passed.

A dozen rowboats—wicker frames covered in skins—lay inverted in a line on the shore. Just past where sand turned to grass, but before turning to forest, a small cluster of homes stood within a fence of long, thin branches woven horizontally between rough posts. Each of the houses had low mud walls and tall conical roofs of thatch.

Finn saw that all the villagers had gathered outside around the houses. Many held torches. A few children chased each other just above the roofs in aerial frolics.

Down the shoreline, Finn continued flying toward the Dayigan fort.

Ominous walls of thick logs, standing two stories high and sharpened, surrounded the roughly square fortress at a hundred and fifty feet across.

When the Dayigans had first arrived four years ago and built their walls, Finn’s people were aghast that they would rip down so much of their forest for such a pointless thing. The structures inside the walls were wooden too, with roofs shingled with green-painted wood. Wooden docks extended from the fort out into the river. Three large sailing ships—not built from these forests but from some forest somewhere—rocked within the tide.

At each corner of the fort, a tower extended higher, and from the center of each, a mast held a smaller horizontal pole at its peak. From each, an emerald green banner hung like a warning in the wind. In gold thread, it bore the sun and both moons in an upward-pointing triangle. A downward-pointing triangle, below the first, represented the distant island city of Dayigo. It screamed, “This is ours now, not yours,” a sentiment echoed by the fort’s inhabitants.

Finn knew better than to enter the fort. Instead, he landed on the shore just outside the wall.

There, the ground was planked over in a level boardwalk. Stalls ran along the edges. The area should have been bursting with goods from all across the continent, but it was empty.

Holding his salmon like a smelly newborn, Finn stared, disappointed and unsure what to do.

Lann landed beside him. “Won’t get much trading done here.”

“’Tis market day, is it not?”

“Aye, it were market day when it were day,” Lann said. “But ’tis not day no more. Come on then, let’s go back. Chief Kaie will have enough gifts without yours, so.”

“I’ve come this far, though, haven’t I,” Finn said. “Might as well see if someone’s about.”

Finn walked forward and stepped up on the boardwalk. He stopped and gasped, clutching his fish to his chest.

A Dayigan soldier stood guard. He was Human—a race like the Terovae, but without wings. They had hairy faces, and though some were thin, like Terovaes, others could grow wider with either muscle or fat. This soldier was larger in the muscular variety, and a suit of chainmail, covered by a green tabard, armored him.

The soldier eyed Finn but didn’t turn his way.

Finn had also found Humans to be a little angry all the time.

“Go on then,” Lann prompted behind Finn. “’Twill be midnight ’fore you’re done.”

Finn breathed deeply and approached.

“Good evening to you, Dayigan friend,” Finn said. “Hate to be a bother, sir, but I’ve come for a quick trade, and I’ll pop off.”

Maintaining his rigid posture and staring forward, the Human replied gruffly. “The market’s shut for the month.”

“Aye, that be true,” Finn said. “And I hate I missed it, but ’tis a special night, this. Tonight, my people—the Feah, well, all the Five Tribes really—celebrate Midyear’s Eve. That’s the end of the dark season and the start of the light season. I’m sure your God Déagar would have a special place in his heart for that, right? Light season, like. And you see, there’s this tradition where we all get a gift for the chief druidess, and I, fool I am, forgot. And to make things worse, me brother’s a temple guardian and his wife—my sister by marriage—she’s not only a druidess, herself, but no less the second-in-command of our whole fecking tribe.” He breathed. “So, ’twill go well noticed if I show up with naught but empty hands and shrugged shoulders, won’t it now?”

The soldier said nothing.

“Right,” Finn said. “What can I get for this then?” He held up the salmon. “A basket of eggs would be lovely. The druidesses use them for the beernog.”

“There’s plenty of fish in the river. We can get our own.”

“That be true, yes. But this fish isn’t in the river, is it? No, this fish is ready and waiting for yourself. And that saves you all the bother of fishing it out.”

The Human turned his head toward Finn and glared a moment. He snatched the fish by its tail. He held it, looked at it, and threw it.

The salmon flew a limp and uneventful flight to hit the boardwalk’s edge, head slapping wood with a spray of blood. It fell to splat on the beach at the water’s edge.

The Human chuckled. “Looks like ’tis in the river to me.”

“Fucking Human!” Lann charged forward to fight.

The soldier drew his sword. “You want to fight me, savage? I’ll gut the both of you before you can—”

“No call for that,” Finn said. “We’re all friends having a chat like.”

Lann stopped but glared.

Finn walked to Lann and patted his chest, now flexed along with the rest of his tense body.

“I don’t think he wants to trade at all,” Finn said. Turning back to the soldier, he added, “We’ll be on our way then. Good night to you.”

The soldier didn’t lower his sword, and Lann didn’t relax.

“The village’ll be waiting for us now,” Finn insisted.

Lann spit on the plank-covered ground.

Finn pushed Lann’s shoulder to turn him.

The Terovaes flew away.

---

Author Bio

Jeremiah Cain is a dark epic fantasy writer of a vivid world that BookLife Reviews called, “rich with detail and myth-lore that traipses brightly through the darker themes.” He served as an army medic and has a BA in Communication with a minor in English. In addition to reading and writing, he loves video games, particularly RPGs.

Author Website: https://jeremiahcain.com

Author Facebook (Author Page): https://www.facebook.com/jeremiahcain.novelist/

Author Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/3117212.Jeremiah_Cain

Author Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/stores/Jeremiah-Cain/author/B002QH4H2C