On October 1 of this year, Misa Buckley launched Venus Ascendant, a review blog that focuses specifically on science fiction romances of all lengths. Her review policy is here. This kind of SFR-friendly review site is rare, so I wish Ms. Buckley all the best in her new venture.
Via SFR Brigade, I learned that Desert Breeze Publishing continues to actively seek science fiction romance:
We wish to promote the growth and expansion of the Sci Fi Rom/Futuristic Romance/Speculative Fiction Romance genres by offering exceptional character-driven novels and series offering appeal to the die hard sci fi fan as well as the adventurous romance lovers.
Sci Fi romance must be smart, well planned, well thought out to build amazing worlds and possible futures with strong characters and great character chemistry and development.
In the same vein, Steampunk (and all variations thereof, ie: Gaslight, Diesel Punk, etc) is a genre in high demand.
If you are looking for a home for your non-erotic sci-fi romance, Desert Breeze Publishing might be worth exploring.
Here's the unofficial blurb, courtesy of the author:
Known as the town monster for the scars all over her face, Jewel applies to the 1 Night Stand service. She believes no one can see past the scars to love her. But she doesn’t expect to be sent to a space station where her date could be any number of unusual alien species.
Flavia left everything behind to be one of five humans working for the Space Service space station. Extremely homesick, she is excited to learn she will be a guide to a woman from Earth visiting the station for a couple days. She is immediately drawn to the petite woman, seeing past her scars to her true inner beauty, stirring unforeseen desires.
Unfortunately, Jewel is there for a date which Flavia hasn’t been told about. Can she contain her lust and simply show her a good time? Or will she let her desire lead them into an unknown future?
***
To help fuel the plot of your next sci-fi romance, Spacefreighters Lounge breaks down the specs of the “Super fast interstellar internet”:
Vint Cerf, the computer scientist who invented the internet is now applying his expertise to applications in outer space. In a Channel4.com article he said: "It's very early days yet, but...[we believe] that all space-faring nations could use them in order to grow an interplanetary backbone, in order to support both manned and robotic space exploration."
But how is this possible? Unlike Earth to orbiting satellites, planets don't remain in the same proximity, they travel on huge orbits and are at times on opposite sides of the sun so the signals must cover enormous distances. So how can this be achieved?
According to the article "The new interplanetary internet system will relay the signal to spacecraft spread across the solar system in bite-sized chunks, speeding up the time it takes to send data back to earth."
Lastly, I saw the following music video of Lucinda Williams’ “Cophenhagen” at SF Signal. It’s about a man placed in a robot suit after an accident (there’s a story behind the video which you can read about here).
Be warned, this video is kind of tear-inducing, but I detected a sci-fi romance feel and the story has a bittersweet HEA. What do you think?
Joyfully yours,
Heather