Book Tour for Starline by Imogene Nix (Promo Post & GIVEAWAY)

As a fan of the sci-fi genre I was excited to discover this new-to-me author and her exciting and sexy time travel story.  Courtesy of CBLS Promotions I'm giving you a glimpse of this story today as well as the chance to win a digital copy of it.  So let's get to it.....

Starline by Imogene Nix

One man, one woman, one psychotic alien. Now the race is on to save humanity. Past. Present. Future.

Mellissa Davis is your average bookstore owner and aspiring romance author until one day an electronic book pad slides through the mail slot of her little bookstore. Now all she has to worry about is a sexy time travelling stealthship captain, staying out of the way of the bad guy and saving the universe, past and present. Not much to ask…

Duvall McCord, an up and coming stealthship captain travels to the past to stop the Ru’Edan leader, Crick Sur Banden, destroying the Earth Empire of the future. His mission? Retrieve the handbook for the Elector. He doesn’t count on love, or saving the woman of his dreams. But time is running out. This warrior must do everything he can to stop the plot…

EXCERPT #1:

“Sir, you have an encoded message incoming from Admiralty,” Engineer Corbin Jard stated. A young officer, new to Duvall’s team, he looked up expectantly at his Captain. His pretty-boy face showed eagerness, and he looked ready to jump up and grab something, anything his Captain commanded. Jard had joined the crew just as the ship prepared to make its maiden journey. A big promotion for one who had, until recently, served on the Star of Ishtar.

“I’ll take it in my office, Jard,” Duvall said, striding through the automatic doors and heading to his office. The crew of the Elector carefully trained for multi-tasking, and given the size of the crew and the status of a Stealth Ship, if one officer sustained injury, someone else could continue their role, and the crew while new, had started integrating nicely.

Hopefully this lead would take them to the handbook they sought, he thought, something to give them a break in the ongoing hunt for Crick Sur Banden. His neck itched, and while he didn’t consider himself superstitious, he never neglected to listen to what his senses told him, and right now they screamed that he needed a lead and quickly.

Once in his office, he secured the door and opened the secure link. “McCord here.”

“Duvall, I have a lead, or something, for you.” The earnest voice of WO Meredith Gentry came quickly. Much as he looked forward to hearing from her, he did not expect to. Meredith continued her work safely tucked away on Aenna. Didn’t she? “I don’t have a lot of time,” she hurried on. “I think they know I suspect something. I rigged the handbook with a tracking device. The secure code is—” He could hear the sound of voices behind her. “Quickly, it’s V422J53. That will allow you to access the secure feed,” she said as he jotted down the tracking device’s code. He could hear her taking quick breaths.

“It moved through the gate outside Eris on code LX543GH4.” He knew that code. He had just generated one giving a similar time path.

“Meredith, are you in a secure location?” he demanded forcefully. Another hitched breath floated through the secure line. He gripped his table and leaned forward, not that he could do anything. The sounds faltered from thousands of miles away. “Meredith?” His sister was in danger, and here he listened on a ship so far away. Barsha! He should have protected her.

“Duvall, you need to access frequency…” Quickly she rattled off the information he would need to follow the device as he tapped into his unit. “Oh God! They’re here—” Abruptly the line went dead.

“Meredith? Meredith?” Now he leaned over the device. Quickly accessing the Admiralty, he demanded a connection to Gentry. A voice informed that Gentry could not be raised, and the voice asked if someone else could help with his query. His demands to talk to the Admiral met with a similar fate. Frustration welled upward, nearly choking him as he disconnected. He knew he couldn’t go back and didn’t know who else to contact. He had to maintain a chain of silence while investigating, especially when the Admiralty could be breached. Never had those words choked him so much.

His heart thudded as he sat back down. Could more than a single infiltrator exist? He hoped not, but the itching at his neck grew in intensity, and he feared the worst. Tapping the information Meredith had given him into his desk screen, he started toward tracking the handbook, thankful for the foresight of officers such as his sister.

The blip of the machine echoed through the room; an answer bounced back to him. A heading he would never have guessed. Toward the Time Port. Well, thank Eshra, if he couldn’t go back to help Meredith, he could at least work toward retrieving the item she had risked so much to track. Quickly he hailed the bridge. “Full speed toward the Time Port,” he instructed, just in time to see the blip disappear.

EXCERPT #2:

Eyes sore and weary from watching information on the changes and major events since her own time had passed, Mellissa reached out and turned off the screen. Amazing. So much had occurred, and to think, I have a chance to be part of it. She shook her head. But so much she needed to learn. Could she manage to do that? What a question to ponder, she thought.

Inside the cramped cubicle of a Security Officer protecting her from prying eyes, she recapped in her mind the wonders she had seen. Interstellar travel—a huge technological leap there alone, she thought, and the change in the governmental systems—so much to learn about. Meeting new species and forming alliances, not to mention colonizing other planets and even inter-species marriages. How amazing was that? In her time, they still carried on talk fests about the feasibility of “some day” considering travel to the stars.

She grinned. And here she was, Mellissa Davis, in space and travelling toward a future she couldn’t possibly have imagined. “George and Eliza would love this,” she muttered to herself.
“Who are George and Eliza?” McCord peered at her, making her jump at the sound of his voice. She had missed the thud of boots on the flooring during her musings.

Mellissa gulped, wishing the floor would open and engulf her. How could she explain without him thinking less of her, not to mention her characters? George, a rough tough space Captain, and his protégée and maybe sometime lover, Eliza? Was it really something you could just blurt out? “Umm, they are characters in a book,” she said.

“A book? Of course, they were still huge in your time. In ours, only the rich have them. The rest have bookpads.” He smiled. “Who was it by? I might be able to access a copy for you.”

Her discomfort deepened. “Umm, I was writing it.” Her cheeks grew rosy.

“Really? Wow. What kind of book is it?” He looked at her, and she was sure his interest seemed genuine. She cringed at the thought of telling him it was a romance. After all, wasn’t it maiden aunts that wrote this sort of stuff anyway? Let alone read them.

Uh oh, she knew what to expect, she thought to herself. “Umm, it was a Sci If Romance.”

He looked at her. “You know, some of the most enduring books from your time are romances. Fancy that.” He grinned, and she could feel the air clear a little. She still felt embarrassed, but not as much as she had.

“Yeah, in my time, romance writers are sort of, well, you know, the bottom of the pack…gaining ground though. We actually have whole associations dedicated to reading romance.” She grimaced up at his face in embarrassment. What must he think of me? I’m some kind of old spinster? But wasn’t that what I was on the road to becoming? An insidious little voice in the back of her head quietly asked. Thinking how she wished her character, George, could be half as sexy as Duvall McCord, she had to mentally remind herself that here stood a real rough-and-tumble Captain and not some figment of her imagination.

“Well, there is definitely a career waiting for you as a writer of romance.” He grinned. “Come on and I’ll grab you a coffee, and you can give me the lowdown on your characters…was it George and Eliza?”

She hopped up quickly and followed him to the mess. Really, it seemed funny how quickly she had settled into ship life, she mused. “So, do you believe in romance yourself?” he asked, and he seemed just as surprised as she did by the question.

“Romance? Yes, absolutely.” Her enthusiastic answer surprised him. It radiated clearly on his face, the way it screwed up slightly. “That’s why I own a bookstore and am writing a novel.”

“Hmm, yes, but did you live alone?” His query zeroed in on a spot she didn’t really like to explore. “I mean, is there a man in your life?”

His gaze zeroed in on her again. She hoped, in fact had prayed, that there was more to the question, and then reminded herself it couldn’t be real. Her imagination still looked for the possibility of a relationship that didn’t and couldn’t exist.

“Not really. I mean, my man is really George at the moment. It’s kinda hard to explain.” She floundered a little, looking for the right words. “The way I grew up, in an orphanage, I never really got to see how families worked together, and I guess it kind of made it harder for me to work out what it looked like, so I guess…” He looked at her strangely.

“Orphanage? I was a fosterling. The Gentry’s fostered me. They were great.” His face softened. “Really good people. It must have been hard with no one in your corner. And they gave me a fabulous sister.” Gently his hand extended toward her chin and raised it until her eyes looked into his. “Really hard for you though…” The words dropped to a trailing whisper as he leaned toward her.

Her eyes fluttered closed as the distance between them melted away. She knew he was going to kiss her. Knew it probably wasn’t a good or even wise decision, but she needed to find out if he tasted as good as he looked.

“Captain, Miss Davis,” Elara called, interrupting the moment. “I see you think it is time for coffee too. Wonderful!” Then she looked again, the realization clear on her face that she had walked in on something. Then Elara seemed to mutter to herself and headed for the mess hall door.

The moment broken, they looked at each other. A wry grin on his face softened the years and hardness from his features somehow. He turned, motioning her toward the door and the coffee that lay within. It didn’t make her feel any better though. She had nearly made a mistake. A big one. Hadn’t she?

Buy at Secret Cravings Publishing here.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR:

A mother of two, compulsive reader and bookstore owner. Imogene lives in regional Queensland, Australia with her husband, 2 daughters, dog, cats, guinea pigs and chooks. She has a particular fondness for Vampires, Star Ship captains and things that go bump in the night.  Visit Imogene at http://www.imoginenix.com.

**********GIVEAWAY**********

Prize is an eBook copy of Starline.

-Giveaway is OPEN TO EVERYONE!

-To be entered just leave a comment, along with your email addy.
-Winner will be chosen using random.org and will have 48 hours to respond to my winner's confirmation email or a new winner will be chosen.
-Giveaway ends at 11:59 PM CST on 4/30.

*To learn more about this book and for more chances to win a copy, find more tour stops here.