Hi guys! I am a part of The Moons of Barsk Blog Tour hosted by the wonderful JeanBookNerd! For my blog tour stop, the author Lawrence M. Schoen has shared with all of us today a short, exclusive excerpt of his latest novel. If science fiction is your favorite genre, then hopefully this snippet will pique your interest! Enjoy!
About the Book
Years after the events of Barsk: The Elephants’ Graveyard, the lonely young outcast and physically-challenged Fant, Pizlo, is now a teenager. He still believes he hears voices from the planet’s moons, imparting secret knowledge to him alone. And so embarks on a dangerous voyage to learn the truth behind the messages. His quest will catapult him offworld for second time is his short life, and reveal things the galaxy isn’t yet ready to know.
Elsewhere, Barsk’s Senator Jorl, who can speak with the dead, navigates galactic politics as Barsk’s unwelcome representative, and digs even deeper into the past than ever before to discover new truths of his own.
He strode further up the beach until the edge of the island’s forest became visible through the rain. Turning slowly, he took in everything that the storm allowed. For a moment it was as if the years fell away and he stood as at the height of his professorial power, poised once more behind a lectern at the front of a classroom. Beating his trunk against one outstretched hand for emphasis he asked his questions, genuinely wanting answers but knowing in his heart they were rhetorical. “Where are all the boats? The fragments of so many journeys? Where are the bones of all the people?” He bellowed into the wind and rain with the last strength remaining to him.
The weather offered no reply. The beach remained merely a beach. Ryne’s trunk drooped lax upon his chest. His upraised arm fell to his side. The years weighed heavily upon him again. It was over. He’d arrived at the last island, done with living.
And then a voice spoke from behind him.
“Really, Ryne, you might ask the same question of any other island. Or do the people of Taylr leave their possessions strewn upon their beaches? Do they eschew the proper rites and fail to bury such citizens as pass before their time? Surely you don’t find debris when you travel the points of either archipelago.”
He spun, swiftly, nearly falling but with a skip kept his feet. There at the forest’s edge, like an actor stepping onto a stage, a figure emerged from shadow and approached through the rain. It resolved into a person. A woman. An old woman. An Eleph. Here, on this island that existed on no map, that only the Dying could find, that made no sense when you thought about it and which no one ever thought about, here was someone walking toward him as nonchalantly as an aunt at a family gathering. And she’d called him by name.
“Ryne of Taylr,” she said, her voice hoarse with years but musical all the same. “I bid you welcome. I am Bernath, my mother’s name was Layne.”
Giveaway
5 Winners will receive a Copy of The Moons of Barsk (Barsk #2) by Lawrence M. Schoen
Giveaway is open to International
Must be 13+ to Enter
Ends September 4th, 2018
About the Author
Lawrence M. Schoen holds a Ph.D. in cognitive psychology and psycholinguistics. He spent ten years as a college professor, doing research in the areas of human memory and language. This was followed by seventeen years as the director of research for a medical center in Philadelphia that provided mental health and addiction services. Evidence from both these career paths can be found in almost everything he writes.
He’s also one of the world’s foremost authorities on the Klingon language, and since 1992 has championed the exploration and use of this constructed tongue and lectured throughout the world. In addition, he’s the publisher behind a speculative fiction small press, Paper Golem, aimed at showcasing up-and-coming new writers as well as providing a market for novellas. And too, he performs occasionally as a hypnotherapist specializing in authors’ issues.
In 2007, he was a finalist for the John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer. He received a Hugo Award nomination for Best Short Story in 2010 and Nebula Award nominations for Best Novella in 2013, 2014, 2015, and 2018, and for Best Novel in 2016. He’s received the Kevin O’Donnell Jr. Service to SFWA Award as well as the Coyotl Award for Best Novel. Some of his most popular writing deals with the ongoing humorous adventures of a space-faring stage hypnotist named the Amazing Conroy and his animal companion Reggie, an alien buffalito that can eat anything and farts oxygen. More serious writing can be found in his BARSK series, which uses anthropomorphic SF to explore ideas of prophecy, intolerance, political betrayal, speaking to the dead, predestination, and free will.
Lawrence lives near Philadelphia with his wife, Valerie, who is neither a psychologist nor a Klingon speaker.
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Happy Reading!
+ J.M.J.
~ Kester
Have you read any of the Barsk books? Do you like science fiction?
Comment below, or find me in one of my social media pages, and let’s chat!
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