Jenyfer Matthews

Eilis Flynn has worked at a comic book company, a couple of Wall Street brokerage firms, a wire service, and a magazine for futurists. She’s written a variety of things that don’t seem to belong together, but they do: comic book stories both online and in print, scholarly works in a previous life as a scholar, book reviews and interviews, and articles about finance (at odds with her anthropology background), before settling down to write romantic fantasies about the reality beyond what we can see.

Eilis’s latest book, Echoes of Passion, is coming out from Cerridwen Press on July 2, 2009.

With Spaceships Instead of Horses

One of the most famous stories about the creation of Star Trek is how Gene Roddenberry referred to the show as he was shopping it around: “Wagon Train” to the stars, he said, referring to a TV Western show that was popular at the time. Boiled down to the generalities, they had a lot in common: Every week, there was a new story about something different on their voyages. One voyage just happened to be on the dusty trail, the other in deep space.

When I was writing Echoes of Passion, I tried to keep that in mind. EoP, you see, is a sci-fi romance, and even though I’d written fantasies before, I’d never written anything resembling science fiction (I don’t count stories about super-heroines as sci-fi; they are firmly in the realm of the fantastic). Because EoP is a story in the Hunters for Hire universe, a shared universe created and developed by a number of Ellora’s Cave and Cerridwen Press authors, I had to make sure I adhered to the story bible. I couldn’t come up with plot devices out of the blue that might be at cross-ends with the bible, so I had to make sure that the indigenous peoples were either mentioned or not contradicting story canon. And it had to be something that was vaguely futuristic. It had to be space opera.

But I’m not a fan of opera in general.

I had a vague story idea but that was it, and my fear of having to deal with someone else’s canon kept tripping me up. But I kept reminding myself that the space opera was mere trapping, that a story was a story, and once I kept that in mind, EoP finally bloomed.

ECHOES OF PASSION is about Daegon Bosaru, a Secret Sciences Police officer, who discovers that someone is spreading damaging rumors about the role that his dying father, the former Neotian ambassador to the Amalgamation, played in the Neotian civil war. To discover the truth, Daegon must travel to the new home world of his clan — where he encounters a mysterious, passionate woman he has been seeing in his dreams for most of his life. She has information he needs — but she disappears whenever he gets close to her.

What does the mysterious woman know? And what do the accusations against his father have to do with this? Bosaru discovers that Verot Barus Kurog, the crazed ex-dictator who led the home world into a civil war, is still alive, and has plans to rise to glory again, no matter how many more people have to die for it to happen — and the doomsday device that destroyed Neotia Prime is still within his grasp.

Bosaru must track down the mad ex-dictator — but first, he must find out what the woman of mystery knows.

ECHOES OF PASSION

Secrets can destroy, but they can also liberate

Neotia Prime…

The home world of the Neoti and the Vozuans was destroyed by a doomsday device twenty years ago, but the troubles and the unrest that led to the event still plague those who resettled on the twin planet. When Daegon Bosaru arrives there, determined to find out who is out to smear his dying father’s good name, he discovers that the tragedies of that civil war still haunt those who remain. Not only that, the mysterious, beautiful woman he’s been seeing in his dreams over the past twenty years may have information he needs, but when he finally meets Imreen Dal in the flesh, she seems not to know him–and further, she runs from him every time she encounters him. Why?

And rumors persist that the crazed dictator who set off the doomsday device may still be alive…with fresh plans for conquest. Bosaru needs to find out how his father, the mysterious Imreen, and the madman are related…and stop another world from being destroyed.

ECHOES OF PASSION
Excerpt

Where did you go? You’re not getting away this time, Imreen Dal!

A flash out of the corner of his eye caught his attention. So what was going on, she hit him over his head and then tried to trip him up, but she stayed around to make sure he was all right? That was a mistake.

She took off, but he was faster, and now, he was angry. She knew the area better, but he knew it fairly well by now. And he was very angry.

Every time she took a turn, he took it a little faster. Every time she tried to double back, he blocked her way. Little by little, he cornered her again–into an open-air alley, with natural light, with no windows, no exits, no tunnels nearby. She was trapped.

If he hadn’t been blindingly angry, he would have felt bad about it. But just in case, he made sure there was nothing around that she could hit him over the head with again.

There was a small, quivering shadow in the corner, almost hidden behind the trash bins.

Her time was up.

“Imreen Dal. Show yourself!” Bosaru shouted.

For a minute the alley was dead silent. For a minute he didn’t think she would comply. Finally he heard a rustle in the shadowed corner before an indistinct form emerged. Even before she hit the light he knew who it was. The white and gold fabric of her priestess shift glinted, just enough to highlight the curves it was wrapped around.

Imreen Dal. The same priestess he first encountered in the shrine.

Imreen Dal. The woman who had been his dreams’ companion all these years.

“Imreen Dal.” Bosaru took a deep breath. “Good to see you again.”

The expression on her face was pensive. Or was it doleful? “I wish I could say the same, Officer Bosaru,” she said. “I did my best to keep away from you, but to this end.”

“Why?”

Her face shifted from pensive–resigned, he realized–to something set. There was a glint in her eye. “I thought it was clear. I do not want to speak to you.”

Well, that was blunt. “Just a few questions.”

“I decline.”

“Why? You don’t even know what I’m going to ask!”

“I can guess.”

“Then why didn’t you just decline instead of leading me on a chase?”

“Would you have let it go at that?”

“No,” Bosaru said. “And you didn’t have to hit me over the head, either.”

“I didn’t,” she said.

They stared at each other for a second. “Then who did?” he asked.

“I don’t know.”

Bosaru stared at her some more. “You weren’t in the burned-out building around the corner?”

She shook her head. “I was hiding around the corner of it when you went inside. I avoid that building. It’s not stable.”

“But it’s got an entrance to the tunnels. I thought that’s where you were going.”

“I don’t like the tunnels either,” she said. “I only use them when I have to.”

“Then why weren’t you gone by the time I got back out?”

“I was worried about you,” she said. “I stayed until I saw you coming out and knew you were safe. And then I left.”

“Then why didn’t you go into the alleyway that was closest? That would have let you in a safe place.”

“I don’t like that alleyway,” she said.

“Is there anything you do like?”

“Being left alone.”

“What is with you?” he asked, exasperated. “I’m not asking for m–”

“I need to get out of here,” she said, her eyes growing huge. “Now.”

She tried to leave, tried to run, but Bosaru stopped her. “Why?”

Imreen Dal looked up at him, her eyes wide. “Haven’t you noticed?” she asked. “The sun’s set. We can’t be out.”

Echoes of Passion – coming from Cerridwen Press July 2009!