Virtual Book Tour and Giveaway: Last Star Standing by Spaulding Taylor

Welcome to my stop on the virtual book tour for Last Star Standing by Spaulding Taylor. This book tour was organized by Goddess Fish Promotions. On my stop, I have an excerpt from the book as well as some great advice for new writers from the author. There's also the tour wide giveaway for a chance to win a $50 Amazon or Barnes & Noble gift card. Be sure to visit the other stops on the tour for more content. Enjoy!

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Title: Last Star Standing

Author: Spaulding Taylor

Publisher: Unbound Publishing

Publication Date: February 18th 2021

Print Length: 336 pages

Genre: Speculative Science Fiction Thriller

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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?

**The eBook will be on sale for $0.99 during this tour.**

Goodreads * Amazon * Apple Books *

Barnes & Noble * Book Depository *

Google Books * Kobo

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BOOK TRAILER:

Watch the book trailer below or by clicking here.

@alicemcveigh0

Last Star Standing: awardwinning action/adventure

♬ original sound - alicemcveigh0

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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.

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ABOUT THE AUTHOR:

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 in 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.

Amazon * Facebook * Goodreads *

Instagram * LinkedIn * LinkTree *

Pinterest * TikTok * Twitter

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GUEST POST:

- What would you tell a new author?

I’m something of an expert here, having been published in contemporary fiction by a “big-five” publisher, in speculative fiction by a medium-sized indie publisher, and self-published besides.

And yes, the genres are mentioned for a reason: genres matter. In fact, my advice to newbies is completely different, depending on the genre that they’re attempting. So…here goes!

If you want to write literary fiction or poetry – Lord love you – you really really really need an agent. (Mine was fab.) But agents are hellish hard to get. So hard that, these days, they don’t even bother to send rejection emails. Instead, they just yawn, grab another martini, and move straight on.

For that reason, I’ve seen good litfic writers give up on the whole agent thing, choose some small-but-worthy publisher and get nowhere, or even self-publish. (Do NOT self-publish literary fiction! If you do, well – your mother’s book club might buy it, but that’ll be IT!!!!)

However, you CAN succeed with self-publishing in the following genres:

ROMANCE: (AND EROTICA: YES! YES! YES!) Big-time!!! Loads of those happy romance bunnies would reject ANY publisher!!!! Some are laughing all the way to the Maldives!!!

MYSTERIES: Ditto, but without bells on. Some mystery self-publishers are laughing all the way to the Maldives, some aren’t laughing much at all. (Cosy and clean tend to do better than the really interesting.)

THRILLERS/SCIFI: This is tougher. Very popular market but hard to promote your self-published one. (Also, next to romance, the hottest amount of competition!) I went with a medium-sized publisher here. Tor would have been great but turned it down in the end.

CHICK/WOMEN’S LIT: The down-market beach-read stuff is VERY saleable in terms of self-publishing, the edgier and more intriguing stuff tends to sink without trace.

But, you’re going, “Hang on! Are you really telling me that I have to either (a) sweat for years in the query trenches until I finally get an agent and a mega-publishing house or (b) self-publish? What about the non-mega publishing houses you mentioned before? Some of them don’t require an agent AND also pay advances, right?”

Yes, you’re right, they do. And I’m not dissing them, I’m just passing onto you what the Society of Authors advised me, when I received several offers for my latest series from small and medium-sized publishers with small advances.

This is what they told me, “You can almost certainly do better on your own – these publishers are fine people, but they haven’t got the resources to publicize your book, and will receive a higher proportion of your royalties than they can justify.”

In other words, IF you can’t get a mega/”big five” deal – which would be perfect – self-publishing is OFTEN better than small presses (depending on genre).

So I wound up turning down the four offers I got and doing it myself. Definitely the right call, in my case.

Hope this is helpful!! And good luck!!!!

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GIVEAWAY:

Spaulding Taylor will be awarding a $50 Amazon or Barnes & Noble gift card to one randomly drawn winner via Rafflecopter. Good luck!

(All the Ups and Downs is not responsible for this giveaway, its entries, or the prize. Goddess Fish Promotions and the author assume all responsibility over this giveaway.)

a Rafflecopter giveaway