Guest Post & Giveaway with Nico Rosso

Happy Hump Day Book Monsters!!

Today we have a special Guest Post by 

author Nico Rosso.

Nico Rosso was born and raised in a factory town.  The major industry: Movies.  Growing up with a creative family in Los Angeles, Nico was surrounded by the film business, and after college he returned home to work in that industry.  From cleaning up gallons of milk after a special effect to pitching ideas to executives as a screenwriter, Nico was there.  

But the movies had changed from the glowing pictures that once inspired him.  He found there wasn’t as much space for his voice and turned to writing narrative fiction, and more specifically, romance (inspired by his wife, Zoë Archer).  He created the sci-fi adventure world of the Limit War, taking readers into an intergalactic battle between planet-consuming aliens and the army that combats their spread.  Turning his sights on home, Nico set off the apocalypse on the Burning Earth, where humans fight to survive against mutant Fire Eaters.  In a joint effort with his wife, he is now working on a steampunk Western set in their shared world of the Ether Chronicles.  And he’s finally bringing to life all the superheroes he doodled in high school with the Heroes Guild.  Inspiration comes from travel, daydreams, research and random lightning bolts, so there’s no telling where the next adventure will start.

Today we are helping Nico promote his newest release "Night of Fire" which is the second book in THE ETHER CHRONICLES series that h e writes with his wife, Zoe Archer.  The first book in the series, "Skies of Fire" is published under  Zoe's name.  Let's take a look at both books in this new steampunk romance series.

THE ETHER CHRONICLES 

In the mid-19th century, new technology opens the doorway to the skies.  The discovery of controlled ether takes mankind into the heavens.  Tetrol-powered engines push new machines further.  But the developments don’t stop there.  The human body itself is altered, joining it with the latest scientific discoveries to create powerful 

Man O’War soldiers.  

Hungry for resources to fuel these developments, countries charge into war.  In Europe, the Man O’ War airships rule the skies, while in the United States, smaller but potent technology is used to defend the country from invaders.  And in the midst of all these machines, men and women find that the greatest adventure comes not from modern science, but from their own hearts.

Night of Fire

 (The Ether Chronicles #2)

NIGHT OF FIRE can be found at:

Amazon /  Barnes and Noble / Indie Bound

US Army Upland Ranger Tom Knox trades the front lines for a different conflict as he returns home to California on his ether-borne mechanical horse. Three years ago, he skipped town, leaving the one girl who ever mattered. Rosa Campos.  He thinks she’ll be settled down but discovers Rosa’s the town sheriff, caught in a battle with a mining company’s five-story, rock-eating machine.  

Tom’s the last person Rosa expects to see riding out of the sky to her aid, and seeing him again reignites a flame more dangerous than the enemy threatening to destroy them both.

From Nico Rosso:

Not only has The Ether Chronicles been an incredible steampunk world to create, the best part is that I get to build the wold with my wife, Zoë Archer.  While I’m telling the Western tales, she’s spinning the adventures around the rest of the globe.  Be sure to check out her SKIES OF FIRE, book one in The Ether Chronicles:

Skies of Fire

 (The Ether Chronicles #1)

Buy Now:

Amazon / Barnes & Noble

Man made of metal and flesh

Captain Christopher Redmond has just one weakness: the alluring spy who loved and left him years before…when he was still just a man. Now he's superhuman—a Man O' War, made as part of the British Navy's weapons program—and his responsibility is to protect the skies of Europe. If only he could forget Louisa Shaw.
 
A most inconvenient desire

Louisa, a British Naval Intelligence agent, has never left a job undone. But when her assignment is compromised, the one man who can help her complete her mission is also the only man ever to tempt her body and heart. As burning skies loom and passion ignites, Louisa and Christopher must slip behind enemy lines if they are to deliver a devastating strike against their foe . . . and still get out alive.

By:  Nico Rosso

The train is rushing through the gorge, smokestack billowing as steel wheels scream toward the damsel in distress, tied to the tracks.

No, no, that’s not right at all.  This isn’t that kind of Western.  This is a steampunk Western.  And that means the old stereotypes need not apply.

In NIGHT OF FIRE my heroine, Rosa Campos, isn’t a damsel.  She’s the sheriff of a Western town.  And the hero, Tom Knox, isn’t there to save her.  He flies in on his ether borne mechanical Sky Charger to help her in the struggle against an evil mining company’s rolling fifty foot rock eating machine.

As my wife, Zoë Archer, and I thought up the world of the Ether Chronicles, one thing we definitely wanted to take advantage of was how we could rewrite some history using a steampunk typewriter.  This meant we could balance the equality between men and women more so than they usually were in the Victorian era.  In her first book of this series, SKIES OF FIRE, her heroine, Louisa, is a spy for the British government.  I knew that the heroine of my book had to be very strong as well.

But it’s not entirely fiction to think of strong women in the Wild West.  I’d say that my steampunk heroine is closer to the truth than the way the damsels are portrayed in a lot of old Western movies and books.  In the real frontier, women fought shoulder to shoulder with men, faced the same natural threats and had to know how to survive, rather than rely on someone saving them.

For Rosa and Tom, it isn’t the easiest alliance.  They’d been lovers until he disappeared without a word three years ago.  As the sheriff, she’s been in plenty of scrapes, but none as big as the evil mining company.  It takes the combined effort of Rosa and Tom to combat the threat, not just Tom saving the day.  In fact, there are plenty of times where she rescues him, too.  

So my question to you is: how active do you like your heroines?  Should they be the only ones wielding the guns and throwing punches, is that the sole domain of the hero, or do you prefer a balance between them?

Nico can be found here: Website / Twitter /  Facebook

 

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