Friday, June 15, 2018

Guest Author Day with Sarah Baethge

Please give a warm welcome to Ronald Carpenter from The Illumination Query by Sarah Baethge today as we sit down and see what makes him tick.

What’s your favorite thing to do when you’re not taking care of the animals?
I like to go around on my bicycle. Before I started traveling for the Eclipse, a bike was how I always got around my home town of New York City. I’ve actually never owned my own car.

What is it about your love interest Prisca that makes you crazy in a good way?
Wow, who have you been talking to? Don’t get me wrong, Ms. Chubb is great, but she’s my supervisor, not my lover. Yeah we spend a lot of time together but I wouldn’t say we are crazy about each other.

Do you sometimes want to strangle your writer? Thrash her to within an inch of their life? Make them do the stupid crap they makes you do?
You mean that me attacking her is an option? You bet I want to! My life was going great and I loved my job when she decides to make me become indebted to a secretive company called the Eclipse, that has a bad reputation. When my bosses hear I’m dealing with them, they simply cut me loose to try and avoid controversy. The Eclipse does take me in, so I guess that’s something. But I certainly didn’t try to set myself against that little twerp she lets the focus of the story focus shift onto. And in all that happens, I tried to talk calmly with Nigel, just went along with what he set up; he’s the one who attacked me! That irritating writer still tries to paint it like I’m somehow the bad guy.

Favorite food?
That’s a change of pace, did I get too excited with the last question? Hmmm, I guess I like hot dogs.

Tell me a little bit about your world. What are your greatest challenges in that world?
I’m a zookeeper, I can keep my cool with supposedly dangerous animals. I guess I find animals more reasonable than people sometimes.

Describe yourself in four words.
Reasonable, strong, trusting, kind

What do you do for a living?
I worked at the Central Park Zoo, now keep control of dangerous creatures that the Eclipse is collecting.

What do you fear the most?
I fear that other people’s bad decisions and my own hesitations might leave me standing against what is right.


Pre-order a copy of the sci-fi/fantasy The Illumination Query at http://publishizer.com/the-illumination-query


The Speed of Darkness, Book 1
Sci-fi/fantasy

Available at:

Buy links:

Blurb:
               The Eclipse Co. is evil.
Ronald Carpenter receives help from this secretive company, but he has no clue how it will change his life. Can their offer of a higher salary make it worthwhile for him to give up the job he loves, and help with activities that he feels are just wrong?

What makes someone agree to act like a monster?

Nigel Hunter’s experiment looks like it could enable incredible powers. When he gets the Eclipse’s help to try it upon himself, the company decides that he needs to be taken prisoner to test it fully.
When what the Eclipse does pits Ronald and Nigel against one another, can either one of them escape?

Excerpt:
Prisca wasted no time. Without even asking what it was, she offered to double my current salary if I could immediately agree to take a high position in their nation-wide test-subject handling team. Although that seemed a generous offer, I had to tell her that I enjoyed living in New York.
“That’s no problem,” she insisted; “we have a far-reaching set of operations. You could really be centered just about anywhere in the country that you want. We only need a person who could be available for emergencies. Someone for when the situation could use a little more thought and tact than we expect from either Roscoe or Bucky who aren’t truly based anywhere either.”

I’d like to say that the money made no difference, that the new job’s questionable moralities stood no chance at making me turn my back on the job that I loved; yet that is a lie I have trouble trying to sell that idea to myself.
That, and the idea of importance that would come from a job for a company who seemed to be willing to ship me about the whole country if not the whole world just for my own expertise wasn’t slightly tempting. A job as ‘Animal Security Manager’ for The Eclipse would be much easier to talk about than a profession where I still have far too many people react like I just claimed to do nothing more than shovel lion droppings all day.
So perhaps I did agree with a small twinge of greed in my heart. Perhaps I was a little quick to sign all of the happy non-disclosure forms without any qualm. I am sure that developing products and testing their effects when used as weapons might hold secrets to make whatever we’re developing ineffective if word of how they are put together did get out. Requiring me to keep my mouth shut was simply nothing more than a logical precaution.
Right?

Giveaway below




Bio:
I was born in Houston Texas in the spring of 1982. I grew up in Texas and Louisiana. I was an intern for Lockheed-Martin out of high school and got to work on computers at NASA Houston for the company. I graduated from Clear Creek High School in League City, Texas with a national merit scholarship in 2000. In November of 2000 I was in a car wreck while traveling to college at The University of Texas at Dallas and the wreck left me in a coma for 6 months. After waking, I have written and self-published short fantasy and science-fiction stories online.


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