Today I am so pleased to welcome J. Scott Coatsworth to Joyfully Jay. Scott Coatsworth has come to talk to us about his latest release, The Shoreless Sea. He has also brought along a great giveaway. Please join me in giving him a big welcome!


Today Scott is sharing some questions/answers he wrote about the book and series:

What is the Liminal Sky series about?

It’s my first love in writing. Thirty years ago – damn, has it been that long? I started a novel called “On a Shoreless Sea.” It was about a generation ship carrying humanity to the stars. It was my first finished book to be sent out to publishers – ten of the large New York variety – and ultimately the reason I quit writing for twenty years when all ten rejected it. When I came back to writing in my mid-forties, it was the first thing I picked up again. I decided to backtrack and tell the origin story for “Forever,” the gen ship. So it’s the tale of humankind’s first journey to the stars, and how it will change us all.

What did you do with your first advance?

Well, it was more a payment than an advance. I sold a short story called “The Bear at the Bar” – a sort of sexy gay Freaky Friday tale – to Dreamspinner, and made something like $35. Mark and I went out to celebrate, and spent $70 on dinner. But it was so worth it!

What’s your favorite under-appreciated novel?

Probably “Larque on the Wing” – Nancy Springer’s tale of a suburban housewife in Pittsburgh, PA who has a gay man inside of her. It was a wistful, sexy magical realism tale, and made me wonder where all the other queer characters were in sci fi and fantasy.

How do you balance making demands on the reader with taking care of the reader?

It is a balance. You want to challenge them, without making them feel too uncomfortable. I have some great beta readers who help guide me when I go too far astray

As a writer, what would you choose as your mascot/avatar/spirit animal?

Oh that one’s easy. The Mongoose. We lived in Kauai for a year back in 2000-2001, but prior to that, we spent a week there, and the worst thing that happened during the trip (on the news) was a possible mongoose sighting. The plantation owners brought the mongeese to the islands in the 1800’s to kill the local rat population, but there was a gaping flaw in the plan. Rats are nocturnal and mongeese are diurnal. So they ended up decimating the birds instead. Kauai was the only island to escape the adorable scourge. Supposedly, a longshoreman unloading the crate of mongeese for Kauai was bitten by one, and threw the crate into the water, where the poor critters drowned. Anyhow, long story short, when we came back to California, there was all kinds of bad news. So we decided to name our nascent web design business Mongoose on the Loose, and my own mascot came from that event too.

What do you owe the real people upon whom you base your characters?

I did once. I never will again. One of the people on whom a character was based was hurt by some of the choices the character makes in the story, and felt it reflected on my opinion of them. So while you may see bits and pieces of me and friends and family in my book, I won’t ever base a character on someone whole cloth again.

How many unpublished and half-finished books do you have?

Let’s see… three? Two are old works that will never see the light of day – though their stories may come back in some other form. The third is my WIP, “Dropnauts,” which is currently tied up in the Pitch Wars contest.

What’s the best way to market your books?What are you working on now?

I just finished the next book in the Liminal world – it’s called “Dropnauts: Redemption Book One” – and it takes us back to Earth to find out what happened after the Last War. I’m also writing more shorts – I made it into the Science Fiction Writers’ Association (SFWA) this year as an associate member, but I want to bump that up to full voting status. The writing never ends!


Blurb

As the epic trilogy hurtles toward its conclusion, the fight for the future isn’t over yet. It could lead to a new beginning, or it might spell the end for the last vestiges of humankind.

The generation ship Forever has left Earth behind, but a piece of the old civilization lives on in the Inthworld—a virtual realm that retains memories of Earth’s technological wonders and vices. A being named Lilith leads the uprising, and if she succeeds in setting its inhabitants free, they could destroy Forever.

But during the generation ship’s decades-long voyage, humanity has evolved. Liminals with the ability to connect with the world mind and the Inthworld provide a glimmer of hope. They’ll have to face not only Lilith’s minions, but also the mistrust of their own kind and persecution from a new government as homotypicals continue to fear what they can’t understand.

The invasion must be stopped, the Inthworld must be healed, and the people of Forever must let go of their past and embrace what they’re meant to become.

Buy Links:

 

The first two books in the Liminal Sky series are on sale!

The Stark Divide (99¢)

 

The Rising Tide ($1.99)


Bio

Scott lives between the here and now and the what could be. Indoctrinated into fantasy and sci fi by his mother at the tender age of nine, he devoured her library. But as he grew up, he wondered where the people like him were.

He decided it was time to create the kinds of stories he couldn’t find at Waldenbooks. If there weren’t gay characters in his favorite genres, he would remake them to his own ends.

His friends say Scott’s brain works a little differently – he sees relationships between things that others miss, and gets more done in a day than most folks manage in a week. He seeks to transform traditional sci fi, fantasy, and contemporary worlds into something unexpected.

A Rainbow Award winning author and Science Fiction Writer’s Association (SFWA) member, he runs Queer Sci Fi and QueeRomance Ink with his husband Mark, sites that bring queer people together to promote and celebrate fiction reflecitng their own reality.


Giveaway

Scott is giving away a $25 Amazon gift card with this tour, along with three eBook sets of his Oberon Cycle trilogy. For a chance to win, enter via Rafflecopter below.

a Rafflecopter giveaway


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