Today I am so pleased to welcome Madeleine Ribbon to Joyfully Jay. Madeleine has come to talk to us about her latest release, Green Death. She has also brought along a great tour wide giveaway. Please join me in giving her a big welcome!

Excerpt

Arris kissed me, bruising, no more than a clash of teeth and lips.

That, more than anything, broke me. We’d never been kissers. I didn’t mind the denial, despite desperately wanting to feel what a kiss was like, mostly because I’d never imagined him being the kissing type. And now, when my banishment and potential execution was so near? Now he gave me what I wanted for so damned long.

When he pulled away, his face was a blank slate, and the chill in his gaze reappeared.

I repressed the urge to scream, to grab at him, to beg to stay in the transport. He might have been my lover, but right now, he was my brother’s top assassin.

These well-wishes and the gun would be the best I’d get from him.

“It’s time” he said as he shoved the gun into the back pocket of the torn, filthy protective work pants I still wore. “There. Brace yourself.” Arris hunched over and fiddled with the metal panel below my window. He grabbed the straps across my chest, and then a great whooshing noise filled the cabin, and the thumping of the rotors above us increased to an alarming volume. Air buffeted my face, ice cold against my cheeks.

And there was no longer any glass between me and the Green Death.

Arris shifted my weight until I sat just on the edge of the seat, tilting out into the nothingness around the transport. The haze hung just below us, the cloudy surface broken in a few dozen places by narrow metal tubes.

“Live, Tryg. Fight for it.” His words rang loud in my ear. Then he yanked my headset off. The noise beat at my eardrums, nearly pounding me senseless.

He shoved, and I was flying.

My hands tightened around the parachute’s plastic handles. I screamed, but the air caught the noise and whipped it away before it ever reached my ears.

Immediately, the harness I wore jolted me hard, and my dead drop jerked and settled into a much slower fall.

The sound of the transport’s rotors faded, but I only had eyes for what lay below me. I drifted closer and closer to the haze, though now I could see dark shapes through the clouds.

They had to be the remains of the old high-rises.

I jerked on the handles, attempting to steer myself, but I didn’t have enough strength yet. Nothing I did seemed to make a difference.

I barely missed one of the chimney-style pipes. My toes skimmed the green air, sending up swirls around me, and then I was plunged into the thick of it.

I held my breath and squeezed the handles on my harness, trying to make this stupid parachute contraption take me up and away.

I just kept dropping, and a gust of wind pushed me straight for one of the dark shapes. The building rushed toward me fast, and I hit the concrete hard. My right arm hurt even through the lingering fuzz of the drugs in my system, and I gasped for air as I bounced away, spinning wildly.

My lungs burned. It was like breathing in smoke a few feet away from a bonfire, only I couldn’t get away from it.

This was my execution.

There was no escaping what the Green Death would do to me—was already doing to me now that I’d inhaled it.

When I slowed, I could see the ground clearly. There were no more buildings. In fact, there seemed to be trees everywhere below me, all growing out of what looked like a ragged crater.

This was the explosion site. The heart of the exclusion zone, all filled with trees. And then I was too low to see the curve of the ground.

In the distance, someone shouted.

People. In the exclusion zone. They’d be Greenies. Tainted. Mindless, violent monsters. More beast than man thanks to what the chemicals did to the brain’s aggression centers.

What would a Greenie actually be like?


Blurb

As poisonmaster to the Oligarch, Tryg Sant knows a lot of things others shouldn’t. But when he discovers his family’s darkest secret, his brother tries to kill him.

When Tryg’s lover pushes him out of a helicopter and into the poison-filled Exclusion Zone, Tryg finds himself trapped in a dangerous new world, entirely different from the one he expects. Now, Tryg has to learn to survive nearly-feral humans and his own disintegrating mind. Luckily, he’s found an ally in Riot, one of the victims of the Green Death…


Bio

Madeleine began writing professionally in 2012. She loves stories with hints of paranormal, fantasy, or sci-fi in them. When she isn’t writing or working the day job, she homebrews beer, attempts to cook, and plays video games. She loves going to Renaissance faires, anime conventions, or beer festivals on the weekends.

Website | Facebook | Twitter | Goodreads | eMail


Giveaway

Madeleine has brought a $10 Amazon gift card to give away to one lucky reader. Just leave a comment at the end of the post to enter. 

a Rafflecopter giveaway


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