Maree Anderson

Winner of the Gulf Coast Chapter of Romance Writers of America's Silken Sands Self-Published Star Contest, Young Adult Category

Winner of the Maryland Romance Writers Reveal Your Inner Vixen contest, Young Adult category

Main characters: Jay (cyborg) and Tyler (outcast)

The book begins with a Jay, a cyborg, being commanded by her father/creator, Dr. Alexander Jay Durham, to kill him...

“I. Do. Not. Want... to do this... Father.”

Alex's eyelids flew open and he choked on a gasp. Real tears glistened in her eyes. It should have been impossible for her to fight the command, impossible for her to produce tears.

A malfunction or a miracle? Only time would tell. And Alex had run out of time.

He snatched a deep breath and clasped his hands, settling them into his lap. His eyelids drifted closed. "Cyborg Unit Gamma-Dash-One, commence sequence J-O-H-N-3-colon-16.”

“Commencing sequence J-O-H-N-3-colon-16,” the cyborg repeated. “I love you, Father.” And in one swift, efficient movement, she broke the old man's neck.

As humans often liked to do in such circumstances, she closed her eyes, honoring her creator and his contribution to this world with a minute of silence and utter stillness. She would have preferred to bury him but that was not part of the plan.

In honor of her creator she names herself Jay.

Jay moves to a middle class town and does her best to blend in and conceal her identity. She signs up for school, what would be more out of place than a teenage girl not attending school.

Tyler, high school student with a talent for writing music and portraiture, is tormented by the other kids in his class and often referred to as a freak. He wished he could go some place new and reinvent himself. He meets Jay and insta crush on the new hot girl.

Jay is doing her best to fit in but continually does things that a typical teenage girl wouldn't. She finds herself feeling emotions beyond what she programmed to feel.

This is a sweet story and so far I am really enjoying this book.… (mehr)

This was a very interesting story that began with a band of men raiding a village for women to be used as breeding stock and a magical man determined to stop them. He casts a spell on the warriors so they would be locked into crystals that bore the names of each of the warriors. Once locked inside, they spent hundreds of years locked in their crystals without hope of redemption until they fine true love. But how does one find true love while locked in a crystal?

Zip to the future and we find a girl named Chalcedony. She hates the name and so she has her friends call her Chalcey. She is a woman on a mission to open her own dance studio, but the bankers aren’t cooperating. On her way to her last ditch attempt to lure the bankers to her side, she stumbles across a crystal shop and is drawn to a stone called Wulfenite. Little does she know that the warrior named Wulfenite is inside the stone just waiting to be released.

Wulfentie, or Wulf as he likes to be called, is released from his crystal when Chalcey is attacked in an alleyway. He totally goes he-man on her and claims she is his and starts kissing her. Chalcey is having none of that (well almost none, there was a second or two when she lost her mind during the kiss.)

Once Wulf and Chalcey figure out whats going on they find they have 28 days to fall in love or he goes back into his crystal. Chalcey is not for falling in love but figures she can fake it well enough to get him off the hook. At least she hopes so.

It was kind of fun to put an old warrior into a today type setting and watch as he tries to adjust to his new world. I think he did pretty good, but there were still things he did that made me laugh. This story has some adult content, but it pretty mild so it falls firmly into the paranormal romance category instead of the erotica category.
This was a great start to a series and happily (thank you Ms. Anderson) it did not end with a cliff-hanger. I will be going on to the next in the series.

Note: This book is currently Free at Amazon and Barnes and Noble.… (mehr)

There is nothing more satisfying than reading a love story in which boy meets girl, they fall in love, are parted by adverse circumstances, fight to get back together and, in the ends do, indeed, get back together in the closing pages. This is just such a novel. And, for sci-fi fans, it is set in some far distant future when our lovers travel between currently unoccupied planets.
Calista inherits a cargo spaceship from her father and carries whatever cargo she can under contract. She loads a large crate, heavily sealed with Imperial seals (Why does there always have to be an Empire?) and takes off for her target planet. Before doing so, she has scanned the crate and established that it is not what it claims to be on the manifest. So she opens it up and finds a large egg at the centre. While she watches, it hatches and a small bipedal creature emerges. Within minutes it has grown to adult size. Her size. It looks a bit like a man with two penises.
After a while she realises she is receiving messages telepathically transmitted from Asher, the creature’s name. It tells her that he is a member of the Phoenicae. Like a duckling he has imprinted himself on her and is her slave forever, which is the characteristic of Phoenicae. In no time at all, Asher has learned that Calista wonders what making love to him would be like. And, of course, she learns shortly afterwards.

Calista and Asher are in the cockpit when they are hailed by a passing trader which is captained by her ex-husband, Nate. Whatever they call themselves in the novel, we would recognise Nate and his evil crew as a bunch of space pirates. Nate tries to soft soap her and tale possession of her cargo. She has good reason for not trusting him, a the last time they met she stripped the skin off one half of his face and removed one of his eyes. So we know she is not entirely defenceless. While Nate and his crew try to board her ship, Asher is in the cargo hold. Calista straps herself in and hits the button to escape at incredible speed. Once clear of danger, she goes back to the cargo hold to find Asher very badly injured from being thrown about and dying. He tells her to set light to him and to scrape his ashes together afterwards. He is reborn, more closely imprinted on Calista than ever.
They decide to visit a planet where they are certain they can get an egg about the same size as the original that was loaded in the crate. There are some strange and particularly dangerous, roving defence mechanisms. Nevertheless, they find and retrieve an egg and start loading it on the space ship. But then Nate and his crew board Calista’s ship and capture both them and the egg.
Nate threatens to torture Calista and gets one of his crew to torture Asher. He sells her to the son of the Imperial Governor of a planet. And Asher to the governor’s wife. The son, Leighton, is sadistic to the point of occasionally killing his partners. Nate drugged Calista in order to deliver her. When she wakes she is shackled hand and foot to a table with Leighton in the room beside her. She excites him by telling him how and what she did to Nate’s face. When they learn that Nate is on his way to check on his delivery and collect his money, Calista escapes from the table and she and Leighton tie Nate to it. Leighton then delights in doing to Nate what Calista did before, with addition measures of his own.
She and Leighton attend a party thrown by his father. The height of the evening is to be Asher. Any member of the audience can do what they like with or to him, providing they leave him alive. His execution will be the climax of the entertainment. Perfect for Leighton. From a privileged position in the audience, sitting with the sadist son, Calista is able to communicate with Asher. They plan a surprising escape.
On their way out from the planet they arrange a mass escape of hundreds of slaves kept in inhuman conditions in foul compounds.
And the rest, the satisfying rest, you can guess at for yourselves. This is a well-written, fast-moving love story set in space.… (mehr)