Interview
Thanks for having me to celebrate the release of my first
novel, “Skythane.” :)
If you could create a new holiday, what would
it be?
National Writer’s Day – every movie poster would be
headlined by the writers, not the actors. Every writer would get free coffee
and donuts all day long. Writer’s block would be abolished for 24 hours. And
we’d all look like movie stars for our cover headshots.
If you could kill one
person, who would it be?
Um… decline to respond. But let’s just say if lightning were
to strike in one place of my choosing, I’ve made up my mind.
If you could sit down
with one other writer, living or dead, who would you choose, and what would you
ask them?
OMG… this is so tough. Can I have two?
Anne McCaffrey, because I adored her books, especially her
Dragonriders series. For my 16h birthday, my Dad bought Moreta’s Ride for me,
even though he had no idea what the hell it was or why I wanted it, and I was
in heaven. I would love to talk to her about her writing style, how she managed
her series, where her ideas came from- everything! I was so bummed I never got
to meet her.
And Sheri Tepper. We just lost her this year, but she was an
amazing writer. I found her by accident, picking up After Long Silence at the
checkout counter at Safeway. But her books were transformative – she was one of
the few writers who could leave me thinking about her stories for weeks after I
finished them. I wish I could have asked her how she came up with them.
If you had the
opportunity to live one year of your life over again, which year would you
choose?
Hmmm… tough one. But it would probably be the year we lived
in Kauai, when I was 32. Mark and I moved there, and it was amazing. We had an
ocean “peek” from our condo, and we had our company meetings on the beach. It
was amazing…
If you were stuck on
a desert island all alone with only three things, what would they be?
The hubby, a bag of Oreos, and a pad and paper. Or is that
four things? Is a person a thing? Do the Oreos count individually, or en masse?
So many questions.
——————
My new novel, Skythane, is just out – and it combines my
love of sci fi and secret reveals and MM romance. I hope you enjoy it!
Review
I think the cover of Skythane (which is absolutely gorgeous) pretty much sets the stage for the story. There's a strong fantasy element, sexy men, and a setting of space/alternate planets. I found the story to be far more fantasy-based than science based, with prophecies, men with wings, mysterious guiding characters, and other things I'd normally associate with the fantastical. In the fantasyesque style, it reminded me of Anne McCaffrey's Pern series which feels very pastoral and fantastical until it delves into the fact that there is a space element in later books.
Of course, unlike the pastoral setting of Pern, J. Scott Coatsworth created an extremely complex "half-planet". The visual of that, when it was first introduced, was fascinating. I immediately wanted to know exactly how that happened and why. There is a lot of backstory in the book that you need to know, but I did find some of the flashbacks confusing to the running timeline. That is a personal preference, however, as I like a linear sequence of events for the most part. Overall, though, the characters and their journey is what drew me in.
I loved the threads of similarity between Jameson and Xander. It comes out in vastly different ways, but they have so many of the same wants and needs. In the end, their growing relationship was my favorite part of the story, just edging out the wonderfully descriptive settings J. Scott Coatsworth created.
About the Book
Authors:
J. Scott Coatsworth
Cover
Artist: Anne Caine
Length: 85K
Format: eBook,
Paperback
Release
Date: 2/17/17
Pairing:
MM
Genres: sci
fi, mm romance, gay sci fi
Blurb:
Excerpt:
Rain hit the plas and ran downward in little rivulets,
separating and rejoining like branches of time as the
storm whipped itself into a frenzy over Oberon City.
Xander Kinnson lay on his bed, head thrown back, watching
the tempest with a laziness that belied his inner turmoil and pain. Alix had
left him and gone missing. A year had passed, and
still he had a hard time accepting that simple fact.
His dark wings with their jet-black feathers were stretched
out lazily to each side of his supine form, their tips extending past the edge
of the bed. His chest heaved slowly up and down, and he breathed easily, as if he were utterly relaxed.
Nothing could have been further from the truth. Below the
surface, under the deception of skin and sinew, his heart beat at a thunderous
pace, and his mind raced for answers to Alix’s fate that slipped beyond his grasp.
The handsome trick he’d brought home rested his warm hands
on Xander’s thighs, his hot mouth engaged elsewhere. Xander smelled the deep,
masculine musk of him, slipping a hand absently through the man’s dark, tousled
hair as the rain increased to a thundering downpour
against the plas. The drops glistened, each an individual universe of
shimmering light before running quickly out of sight.
A flash of lightning illuminated the room, thunder
indicating how close it had been. As the heavy rain pounded
against the arco’s walls, Xander rode the wave of pleasure higher and higher.
Despite himself, he rose quickly toward climax, drawn up on the tide as the
trick worked his cock. Unable to stop himself, he thrust his hips almost
angrily upward into the man’s willing throat. Closer,
closer….
He reached the crest, a pleasure so intense it burned
through him like phosphorous, a white-hot fire.
Lightning
flared again across the wet, black sky, followed by thunder so close it shook
the bed. The storm had reached a fever pitch outside, and he arched his back in
the air one more time, his wings rustling beneath him. As if in concert with
the storm, Xander came, the release of his orgasm radiating from his hips along
his spinal cord and down through his toes and the tips of his wings.
The
rush of elation washed away his cares for a few brief moments. Xander
shuddered, shivered, and shuddered again, and it was over.
For
a while, he drifted in an oblivion that was blessed in its emptiness. The rain
fell in a steady beat against the window, and he forgot to wallow in his pain.
His mind floated free, with no responsibilities, nothing to worry about for
those brief moments between sex and real life. This was what he needed. This
lack of thought, this pleasurable oblivion where he could just be.
When
he opened his eyes at last, the nameless trick was staring down at him,
expectant.
“You’re
still here.”
“I
can do more, if you’d like,” the man said with a grin. Like Alix, he had no
wings—a lander man.
Xander
glared at him, annoyed. He was handsome enough, tall, dark-haired, with blue
eyes and a light complexion. Strangely, he reminded Xander of Alix. The hair
and eyes were wrong, but there was something about him, and that annoyed the
hell out of Xander, for reasons he didn’t care to examine too closely. “Get
out,” he said with a dismissive wave.
The
man frowned. “I thought—”
“Oh
right, your pay.” Xander took the man’s arm and slitted him a hundred crits
from the wrist reader embedded in his own. Then he waved the trick away. “We’re
square. Now get the fuck out of my flat.”
The
man gathered his own clothes, but Xander didn’t give him time to put them on.
Instead he hustled the trick out of the irising door, palming it closed on his
hurt and angry expression.
I really have become a bastard,
he thought, staring at his dim reflection in the shiny black door. It had been
a long year.
He
tapped the cirq in his temple with his left hand, and called out to his PA.
“Ravi, any messages for me?”
Buy Links Etc:
Dreamspinner - eBook: https://www.dreamspinnerpress.com/books/skythane-by-j-scott-coatsworth-8154-b
Dreamspinner - paperback: https://www.dreamspinnerpress.com/books/skythane-by-j-scott-coatsworth-8155-b
Amazon - kindle: https://www.amazon.com/Skythane-J-Scott-Coatsworth-ebook/dp/B01MUF8D9G/
Amazon - paperback: https://www.amazon.com/Skythane-J-Coatsworth/dp/1635334039/
Barnes & Noble – paperback: http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/skythane-j-scott-coatsworth/1125557133?ean=9781635334036
Kobo: https://www.kobo.com/us/en/ebook/skythane
iBooks: https://linkmaker.itunes.apple.com/en-us/details/1195468498?country=us&mediaType=books&term=Skythane
Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/33899235-skythane?from_search=true
Author
Bio:
Over the ensuing
years, he came back to it periodically, but it never stuck. Then one day, he
was complaining to Mark, his husband, early last year about how he had been
derailed yet again by the death of a family member, and Mark said to him
"the only one stopping you from writing is you."
Since then, Scott
has gone back to writing in a big way. He has sold more than a dozen short
stories - some new, some that he had started years before. He is currently
working on two sci fi trilogies, and also runs the Queer Sci Fi
(http://www.queerscifi.com) site, a group for readers and writers of gay sci
fi, fantasy, and paranormal fiction.
Website: http://www.jscottcoatsworth.com
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/jscottcoatsworthTwitter: https://twitter.com/jscoatsworth
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