[Book Tour- Interview] Last Star Standing [GIVEAWAY]

 

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.

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