Last Star Standing
by Spaulding Taylor
GENRE: Thriller (speculative)
Aiden has always felt like an outsider. After the rebel assassin is captured and imprisoned by
the world’s galactic overlords, he awaits execution. Then a mole working for the occupying
regime alerts him to a plot that could destroy the entire resistance...
Engineering a daring escape, Aiden’s growing feud with the new rebel leader leaves him out in
the cold and smouldering with resentment. Faced with deceit and betrayals on every side, he
recruits a group of overlooked outcasts and stakes everything on one last mission.
Can the restless, reckless Aiden take a stand long enough to save humanity from enslavement?
EXCERPT
Lips parted, the woman pressed eagerly forward. The target smiled at her but instead selected a
pudgy lad of about six. He passed a skinny guy – who looked, the poor sap, practically broken-
hearted. He was almost upon us. My heart sped until it seemed ready to jerk straight out of my
chest. Choose me. Choose me. CHOOSE ME.
The Enlightened One seemed – or was it only my imagination? – to be gazing directly at me.
Pushing swiftly past Petra I extended my hand. He turned, made a strange gesture, almost of
benediction, then wired the back of my hand with that thick blackened stump. An instant surge
of heat pulsed up my arm and throughout my torso. Then a wild swirl of fuchsia-slashed-with-
orange flashed beneath my eyelids, as if the same stars, fiery and spot-lit against the black, had
been injected into my brain. My every corpuscle felt fired, an almost intoxicating sensation,
especially after the chill of the poison. I half-stumbled, almost squashing a smallish alien, and
only saved myself from falling at the last second.
Through a haze – my eyeballs felt as if they were swimming in flaming waterfalls – I saw Petra
and moved towards her. Of course. She couldn’t risk being stamped, in case the creature died
too fast. As we walked the ornate brand began to swell on my hand – a warming, tightening
feeling. The sense of strangeness accelerated, though this might have been from my borrowed
DNA, the chilled poison in my blood, or the fiery stamp. But nothing could dent my happiness,
because – I’d done it. I’d assassinated The Enlightened One.
Interview with the author
What are four things you can’t live without?
My family, my sausage dogs, my cello and my laptop.
What is your favorite television show?
Depends on my mood. Currently, the French Open tennis, no question!!!!! I adore tennis!!!! I play it at
least three times a week, and have lessons, but I’m really really good at watching it…
If you could be any character, from any literary work, who would you choose to be? Why?
Frankly, most characters end badly… Could I be a character on MasterChef instead? LOVE
MasterChef… OK, if you insist, maybe Bertie Wooster. He generally emerges unscathed, thanks to
Jeeves.
What have you got coming soon for us to look out for?
There is a film company looking at the possibility of filming one of my books. But I’m terrified it’s bad
luck to mention it. I sold the film rights to my first novel, one of the contemporary novels Hachette
published, to Channel 4, and rushed around, all thrilled, thinking this meant – for sure – it was going
to be a TV series. Of course, it was lovely to get the money for the option, but it was an option, that’s
all. And all an options means is that no other company could look at it with a view to possibly filming
it, that particular year. So now that I know about options – I’m more cautious. WAY more cautious!
What books or authors have most influenced your own writing?
Am assuming you mean my speculative thriller writing… I’d love to say le Guin, because I adore her
writing. But probably John le Carre... McCarthy’s The Road just – blew me away. I could read nothing
else – THINK of nothing else – for days, weeks, even. But I would hesitate to suggest that I was
influenced. He’s just TOO good for that.
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Alice (Spaulding Taylor) McVeigh has been published by Orion/Hachette in contemporary
fiction, by Unbound Publishing in action/adventure and by Warleigh Hall Press in Austenesque
fiction. Her novels have won Gold Medal/First Place is the Global, eLit and Pencraft Book
Awards, been runner-up in the Independent Press Awards, finalists in the Eric Hoffer, Rone and
Wishing Shelf Book Awards and selected by Shelf Unbound as one of the "top indies" of 2021.
Two of her novels are currently finalists in the CIBA Book Awards (the Cygnus and Goethe
Awards). Her most recent novel (Harriet: A Jane Austen Variation) was just selected as Editors’
Pick “outstanding” on Publishers Weekly.
A professional London cellist, Alice lives in London and Crete with her professor husband: their
only child is completing her Masters in Chinese Literature. They also share two miniature long-
haired dachshunds and an incurable addiction to tennis.
Links:
https://linktr.ee/ASTMcVeigh
Facebook: (me) https://www.facebook.com/alice.mcveigh.5/
(author me) https://www.facebook.com/alicemcveighauthor
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/mcveigh.alice/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/astmcveigh1
Amazon author page: https://www.amazon.com/Alice-
Mcveigh/e/B07TDKZPVT/ref=aufs_dp_fta_dsk OR
https://www.amazon.com/Spaulding-Taylor/e/B08TRLNW31/ref=aufs_dp_fta_dsk
Amazon.co.uk: www.amazon.co.uk/Alice-
Mcveigh/e/B07TDKZPVT?ref=sr_ntt_srch_lnk_1&qid=1610184384&sr=1-1
Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/1108881.Alice_McVeigh
Linked in: https://www.linkedin.com/in/alice-mcveigh-59ab1718/
pinterest https://www.pinterest.co.uk/astmcveigh/_saved/
tiktok: https://www.tiktok.com/@alicemcveigh0?lang=en
Video for Last Star Standing:
https://www.tiktok.com/@alicemcveigh0/video/7092364955680279813?is_copy_url=1&is_from_
webapp=v1&lang=en
Sales link: Book will be on sale for $0.99 during the tour.
https://www.amazon.com/Last-Star-Standing-Spaulding-Taylor-ebook/dp/B08PF4ZTZF
GIVEAWAY
One randomly chosen winner via rafflecopter will win a $50 Amazon/BN.com gift card.
a Rafflecopter giveaway
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