Havan's Heavenly Haven: Book Tour: Battle Stations @christi_kat @PridePromo @dreamspinners #boyxboy

Get ready…get set…READ…

Battle Stations

Chris T. Kat

Series: Alliances, book 2 – should be read in order

Release date: October 12, 2015

Let’s put Chris T. Kat in the hotseat!

Favorite thing about building your own world?

I loved writing the Alliances books as I could indulge in creating vicious war beasts that are a blend between dinosaurs and the Tash’Ba’s (that’s an alien race) war beasts. Then there was also the fact that I could play with gender roles and what they mean. It was truly great fun to create Breeding Stations and Battle Stations. :)

What inspired you to write your first book?

My first book is Seizing It. It was also the first book I’d written with original characters. Before that I wrote a lot of fan fiction in various fandoms. There were people who urged me to write original fiction (my husband was one of them) and eventually I gave in.

Kit came to life because I wanted to show how someone with his background and epilepsy dealt with daily life. Kit doesn’t like his disability, so he often refuses to do the reasonable thing, which can lead him into trouble.

Do you have a specific writing style?

Hmm, now that’s a difficult question. I often use first person narrative as it’s the easiest for me. The writing flows immediately and I feel close to my character. When I’m connected to my character, everything goes smoothly. I think my characters often talk without regard to society rules, and there’s definitely some humor and snark in my stories.

Who are some of the authors who influenced you to write?

I’m not sure I’d say there’s an author who influenced me to write. There are definitely authors I admire—the way they craft their stories, the sheer skill of their writing, but I’m not sure they influenced me. I’d actually say that reading a great book intimidates me and leads me to question myself.

The authors I love to read best are Dean Koontz, Josh Lanyon, and Jordan L. Hawk.

What are some jobs you’ve held? Have any of them impacted your writing? How?

I’ve been a Special Ed teacher my whole life. I’ve worked the odd job in retail during my studies, but teaching has always been my thing. I’m sure that working with children with different difficulties in their development (physical and / or emotional) has impacted my writing. Some characters were based on children I’ve worked with. For example, Sean, Alex’s little disabled brother in the Jeff Woods Mystery series.

Other characters have disabilities as well. For example, Kit has epilepsy (Seizing It), and Joshua has cerebral palsy (Despite the Odds). I always wanted to show disabled people in a realistic light—how the disability impacts their life, but how they should be treated with the same respect as anyone else. I hope that comes through in my writing.

Oh, and there’s definitely no shortage of children in my stories. I know that some people want their books to be kid-free zones, and while I can understand the preference, I love to read about children.

Blurb:

The fight to eradicate the Tash’Ba breeding stations continues, with spunky Commander Berit Turner and his Nadisc mate, Tom, in the thick of things. Sometimes it seems as though they’ll never locate and destroy them all. And there’s always the fear that the Tash’Ba have something else, something worse—if that’s even possible—lurking ahead.

As if things aren’t bad enough, Berit’s less than stellar past is threatening to bite him in the ass, and they’ve received alarming new information. The Tash’Ba Queen needs to use Earth as a place to hatch the egg of her successor. And if what she says is true, the new Queen will be even more voracious and cruel than her predecessor.

Berit, along with his team—Tom, Carson, Niyara, and Fleur—must do everything in their power to stop her. If they fail, Earth will be lost forever.

Categories: Science Fiction, M/M Romance

Publisher: Dreamspinner Press

Cover Artist: Anne Cain

Excerpt:

Veering to the left, I allowed myself a quick glance over my shoulder. Not that I saw any chance of the elgoth having lost interest in me, because those fucking beasts never lost interest once they’d set their sights on prey, but sometimes a new prey might attract them more, which I’d have welcomed right then.

My lungs burned and my leg muscles smarted like hell from running like a rabbit through thick brushes and overgrown ferns. I even zigzagged around. Too bad I couldn’t find a rabbit’s hole to hide in.

I had no idea where Tom, Carson, and the rest of the team were, either.

We’d been separated before—it happened when gigantic Tash’Ba war beasts decided we looked good enough to eat—but I’ve never liked it. No, scratch that. Every time it happened, it put the fear of God in me. A gust of warm breath, mingled with some spittle, sprayed my neck. I squeaked and swerved to the right, vaulting over a stunted tree trunk. Seconds later, wood splinters sped past my head, and I lost my footing on the vibrating ground.

I sprawled facedown in the mud, panic sending bolts of confusing messages through my body. Maybe… maybe if I kept completely still, the elgoth wouldn’t touch me? The first time I’d made the acquaintance of one of these towering forty-foot-tall creatures, Tom had instructed me not to move, because they wouldn’t be able to locate us.

It had worked on Ligador and a couple of other breeding stations, but last time a team member tried this approach, the elgoth had roared and ripped him apart. All Tash’Ba war beasts seemed to be altering their tactics, making them even more unpredictable than before.

The mud around me sloshed, almost causing me to inhale some of it. I suppressed the urge to cough and kept my mouth shut as tight as I’d ever done, even though a whimper threatened to spill over my lips any second.

Another gust of foul breath struck my neck. My hair stood on end, my muscles locked in some kind of rigid stupor. That was it. I’d end my life as a morsel for an elgoth.

A blast echoed from the south, and the beast’s breath vanished from my neck. Gunfire followed the blast, and voices filtered through my terrified haze. They’d run right into the elgoth if I didn’t warn them. But… if I moved, or raised my voice, the elgoth would bite my head off. Literally.

You can find Battle Stations here:

Let’s talk about Chris T. Kat:

Chris T. Kat lives in the middle of Europe, where she shares a house with her husband of many years and their two children. She stumbled upon the M/M genre by luck and was swiftly drawn into it. She divides her time between work, her family—which includes chasing after escaping horses and lugging around huge instruments such as a harp—and writing. She enjoys a variety of genres, such as mystery/suspense, paranormal, and romance. If there's any spare time, she happily reads for hours, listens to audiobooks or does cross stitch.

Find Chris here: