The Chronicles of Deneb Series by Zanne Raby

Please welcome Zanne Raby author of The Chronicles of Deneb Series

Zanne Raby will be awarding a $25 Amazon/BN GC to a randomly drawn winner via rafflecopter during the tour.

The Chronicles of Deneb Series

by Zanne Raby

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GENRE: Science Fiction/Space Opera

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INTERVIEW:

1. What or who inspired you to start writing?

It was kind of like the Beatles song, “The Long and Winding Road”, since that was the path that I took to become a published author. But I really should start off by saying that I’ve always wrote, even as a small child. When I was in grade 4, my teacher, asked the class to write a short story, about 5 written pages. Two of my uncles were in World War Two in the Pacific Theatre. My one uncle was a tank driver and the other a Marine. So when the teacher asked me to write a story, I thought about my two uncles who used to talk about their adventures and I penned a short story about a PT boat in the Second World War. I was really proud about my work and I showed it to my mom and dad. Anyhow, I got the story back with an F and that Ms. Garvin wanted to talk to my parents! My mom told me that Ms. Garvin said that I copied the story from Reader’s Digest. My mom set her straight and my mark was raised to an A. Even as a kid, I knew I wanted to write a novel. When I was a teenager, I continued to write short stories, but I also wrote poetry. I hid it away but my mom sent it off to a magazine and several of my poems were published. And you know the funny part, instead of being proud, I was furious at my mother for having violated my privacy. Stupid kid, right?

That’s when I told my parents I wanted to be an author. My father, being the practical sort, said that no one makes a living writing. So for the moment, I pushed it aside and concentrated on high school. And reading. I read everything I could get my hands on. I read the entire Lord of the Rings, all three books, within a week. I read silly romance novels. I read adventure and I read science fiction. I loved to read. But writing had to take a hiatus so I left it on the side and joined the military. Decades later, I retired and it was like hitting a wall. I was still young and filled with energy and ideas. So I thought I would pick up the pen, or more like the keyboard, once more.

The inspiration to become a writer came not only from my grade school teacher or my mom but also from my time in the military.

2. How did you come up with ideas for your books?

For many of the stories that fill my novels, inspiration comes from my dreams. I find that the best plots simmer in my mind overnight and then wake me up around five in the morning. I keep a note pad on my bedside table to jot all these unrelated thoughts down. Some of what I write makes no sense, but a lot of times I get amazing ideas from mulling things over while I’m half asleep.

Since I wanted to write a sci-fi / space opera novel, and the setting took place across the Milky Way Galaxy on habitable, earth-like planets, I did a lot of looking up into the sky. I chose the names of my planets mainly based on constellations. The name of the series, “The Chronicles of Deneb”, features the name of the main planet in my novel – Deneb7. Deneb, being a supergiant star in the constellation Cygnus the Swan, is one of the brighter stars in the night sky. Such a giant star could surely have an Earth-like planet, orbiting at a safe distance of course.

And naturally, I like to bounce my ideas off some of my friends. They keep me on the straight and narrow when I want to go off on tangents with a few of the whackier ideas I dream up.

3. What expertise did you bring to your writing?

My main character, Daniel, is an astronautical engineer turned botanist. Yes, that’s a big career shift, but he didn’t have much choice – you’ll have to read The Flight of the Mayflower to find out why! As for my expertise, I’m an avid gardener. I tinker with every type of plant and seed you can imagine. At least ones that grow in Zone 5 of Canada. I’m the person who grows tomatoes, cucumbers, and peppers indoors during the long snowy winters. The walk out of my basement is truly light-filled, and it’s the spot where these guys hang out along with many of their herb friends. Although I’m not a botanist, I bring my gardening skills into Daniel’s life.

Several of the other characters are in the military – Fynn Vogel is a fighter pilot, Pallav Kóbor works in security, and Ravenna is an army general. These are the easier characters for me to write about since I myself was in the military for 38 years. Ravenna’s irksome problems pop right out of my past.

4. As far as your writing goes, what are your future plans?

The Collective will be well and alive even after Fires of the Fury, the third novel in the series “The Chronicles of Deneb”. I’ve already begun work on book #4, and the fifth book has a framework that I’ll flesh out when the time comes. But I was thinking of taking a little break after the fifth book and working on a totally different genre. Something perhaps set in the past instead of the future and exploring how characters grow and react to some pretty nasty things that I throw in their paths.

5. If you could be one of the characters from any of your books, who would it be and why?

Ha! That’s a tough question. Truthfully, I would probably want to be General Ravenna. I introduce her towards the end of the first novel, The Flight of the Mayflower. As the series progresses, we see little glimpses of what her life has been like and who she really is. It’s not always been easy for Ravenna, but she’s the type of woman who puts everything into her work while also not forgetting to take time out to play. In her early 50s, she’s had an exciting life and now she’s reached the pinnacle of power within the alien army. She’s intelligent, capable, and resourceful. When the chips are down, the High Commander knows he can rely on General Ravenna to get the job done. But Ravenna’s not all work no play. This powerful gal knows what she wants and she’s not intimidated by anything, not even assassins or foreign spies. Why wouldn’t I want to be General Ravenna? She definitely rocks!

6. Do you outline your books or just start writing?

When I first started writing, I just flew by the seat of my pants. The first novel was written pretty much like that. But as the series grew, I very quickly realized that I needed to keep track of where I was going with the plot. I built a timeline that stretches across the span of the three decades. It’s pretty flexible though – what in the world remains fixed over thirty years? When I come to write the next book in the series, I work the plot in broad brush strokes. Then before I embark on a chapter, I make a sketch of who’s doing what and where the action is going. With time and experience, I’ve learned that providing an outline of the novel beforehand works best for me.

7. Do you have an all time favorite book?

It has to be Doctor Zhivago and how World War I coupled with the Bolshevik Revolution overturned the lives of average people, thrusting them into situations in which they would never have otherwise found themselves. Yuri, the philosopher, poet and medical doctor, a kind soul trying to survive in a world gone mad. Lara, seduced by her mother’s lover, the much older Mr. Komarovsky, who marries a rabid Bolshevik revolutionary. Pasha, the young idealist revolutionary who leaves wife and becomes the fearsome Commissar Strelnikov. And the innocent, loyal Tonya, wife of Yuri and mother of his son. All caught up in the whirlwind events of the early 20^th century, their lives are like tangled balls of yarn. The very complexity of the novel appeals to me, with its vast cast of characters and the theme of war as a catalyst for decisions that will have the greatest impact on life.

8. Have you started your next project? If so, can you share a little bit about your book?

I’m working on the fourth novel in the series, which takes Daniel and his colleagues from Deneb-7 and onto a very different alien planet named Cepheus-9. While Deneb-7 is described as more or less a desert planet, Cepheus-9 is a tropical paradise. Daniel finds himself employed as an exobotanist with the Collective. Not a dream job for him, but he soon comes to appreciate it for the opportunities and freedoms that it allows him. Daniel and his boss Meera form a tight team, fighting climate change on the exoplanets of the Collective and natural disasters using their botanical wizardy skills. The series isn’t called “The Chronicles of Deneb” for no reason, and Daniel, Meera and an entomologist named Burell are forced to leave the Cepheusian tropical paradise and return to the Denebian desert in order to save millions of lives.

9. Can you tell us a little about the black moment in your book?

In the second book of the series, Descent into Darkness, two of the characters experience a great tragedy. The first is a fiery female warbird pilot who, after struggling to prove herself, finally comes to terms with who she is – and she is every bit as good as the best of the fighter aces. The second character is her husband, the man born to fly, the ace of aces, a freckle-faced guy with a love for sweet iced tea and a killer instinct. What happens changes their lives forever and sends one of them on a path of retribution and revenge.

10. Anything else you might want to add?

The strange thing is that I didn’t set out to write a science fiction series. Initially, I was working on a futuristic tongue-in-cheek novel about a sort of sanctuary planet where women could thrive in a mutually supportive communal type of existence. What would this world look like? How would it function? What is the back story? The plot was taking place in the future, so decided I would have alien females involved as well. I needed to create an organization of planets hosting advanced life from which the alien females originated. And this led to the Interstellar Collective for Peace and Security, a group of planets within our galaxy with humanoid life. I already had a main character in mind, and she was human. I needed to get her onto one of the planets belonging to the “Collective”. From that sprouted the Space Ark Mayflower, a starship from Earth that ventured forth to find a new habitable planet after we humans destroyed our world. From that grew “The Chronicles of Deneb”.

BLURB:

The Chronicles of Deneb is a science-fiction/ space opera series set in the near future. The year is 2080 CE. The world is dying. Get ready to travel into the future to a time when nothing is certain.   Where the science behind climate change was ignored, leading to drought and famine plaguing an already overpopulated globe. Massive waves of refugees stream across the planet, seeking sanctuary. Where terrorist groups have joined forces with biohackers to develop a deadly bio-engineered disease that marches across the continents like a conquering army, leaving millions dead in its murderous swathe.

Meanwhile, some of the best and brightest minds on the planet are feverishly at work – constructing gigantic Space Arks to shuttle hundreds of thousands of people to a colony on Mars.  And it seems like there’s more good news: world leaders announce that a vaccine is ready. It’s all good; it’s all returning to normal.

But the truth is very different. In THE FLIGHT OF THE MAYFLOWER, the first novel in The Chronicles of Deneb, Dr. Daniel Radu – project manager for NASA’s Space Ark Mayflower – uncovers a global conspiracy of immense proportions. But Daniel cooks up a scheme of  his own.  Joined by a team of global experts, he and his colleagues brace themselves for a journey of a lifetime as they trek across the galaxy in a quest for survival.

Mayhem follows the Mayflower in the second book of The Chronicles of Deneb series, DESCENT INTO DARKNESS. Journey along with the crew of the Space Ark Mayflower as they adapt to their new home on the planet Deneb. But along with their struggle to integrate into an alien culture, a new battle sweeps across the planet with the arrival of the human-transmitted Chimera bactovirus, bringing war and fanning the flames of racial intolerance. With a bloody conflict now raging across the planet, the crew of the Mayflower is split between the two factions and embroiled in the chaos and destruction.

FIRES OF FURY is the third installment in The Chronicles of Deneb. Will the survivors of the Space Ark Mayflower find their way when cultures clash and the fires of fury threaten to consume their lives? Now masquerading as citizens of the Collective, the Mayflower crew has a new reason to fear. With the end of the Second Denebian War, Wesselan’s General Pallav Kóbor and his astrophysicist wife, Dr. Tara Kóbor, have high hopes that life will return to normal on Deneb7. Yet nothing can be further from the truth.In a diabolical plot to erase the scars left by the Second Denebian War, warlord turned Wessel Head of State Gomalan unleashes a fiendish scheme to heal his nation’s wounds, while his top soldier, General Ravenna, falls under the spell of a seductive Fyjer agent intent on crushing their ambitions. Dragged into a brutal reality of terror and intrigue, can the Kóbors and warbird ace Fynn Vogel remain unscathed, or will the flames consume them and all that is evil on Deneb-7?

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EXCERPT:

A willowy brunette with shining brown eyes burst from the shadows, almost scaring Daniel out of his skin. “Tara,” he gasped, trying to quiet his heart. “What the hell? The president’s due here any second.” Dr. Tara Kóbor, the Nobel-prize winning astrophysicist who had discovered the find of the century – an Earth-like planet cuddled up in the Goldilocks zone of its star – was wearing a grin as wide as the Grand Canyon.

“You heard the news, right? I mean, the broadcasts are on fire. They’ve developed a vaccine! And whoever’s on the first shuttle flight is top priority. That means…”

He could hear heavy footsteps pounding on the hangar floor: time to play show and tell. Taking her by the shoulder, Daniel shepherded his friend to the bulkhead door. “It means you gotta get outta here. We’ll celebrate later,” he promised.

Just then, a bevy of bodyguards swooped in, all earpieces and dark glasses, and Daniel stood back as they robotically carried out their duties. No need really, NASA’s Chief of Security had seen to that. Out of the corner of his eye, Daniel spotted Tara’s husband, Lt-Col Pallav Kóbor, dwarfing the president’s team as he walked them through the hangar. He could hear the click click click of the cameras as the president approached with his staff trailing behind like good little shadows.

Show time, he mumbled to himself, wiping the sweat from his palms on his cobalt-blue NASA tunic.

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AUTHOR Bio and Links:

SHORT VERSION

Zanne Raby is a military veteran, having served for over three decades across North America, Europe and the Middle East.  Passionate about all things space, her novels weave fast-paced, team-oriented environments into character-based science fiction.  Currently residing in a small town on the shores of Georgian Bay, Ontario, Zanne enjoys hiking, gardening and Sudoku.

LONG VERSION

Since the days of the Napoleonic War, there has always been a member of Zanne’s family in uniform.  Choosing to follow in the footsteps of her ancestors, Zanne joined the Canadian Armed Forces in 1980, and was selected to attend the Royal Military College of Canada – the first year that women were accepted into that prestigious academy of learning.  After graduation, she studied to become a Transportation and Movements Officer in the Royal Canadian Air Force.

During a career spanning 38 years, some of the most memorable experiences involved command of 8 Mission Support Squadron as part of Joint Task Force Afghanistan, leading a study on support to the Canadian Arctic involving several trips to Northern Canada, including Canadian Forces Station Alert (the most northern settlement in the world), a three-year tour with NATO at Joint Force Command Brunssum, a deployment as the NATO Liaison Officer to United States Central Command, and finally a nomination as the Deputy Commander for the Canadian Forces Recruiting Group.

After hanging up the uniform and putting away the combat boots, Zanne bought a small acreage in Central Ontario and designed her own house.  With a cozy office overlooking the shores of Georgian Bay, she decided to pursue her life-long ambition:  to become an author.  Enough of the reports and returns that littered her desk over her career, now she could turn her attention to unleashing the creativity that had taken a back seat.  The time had come to shake the dust off begin a new career.  The winds of change had called.

Zanne is currently crafting The Chronicles of Deneb, a sci-fi space opera series that will take the reader from a dystopian earth on a voyage across the universe in search of a safe haven.  But trouble is in store for them when the planet they land on is anything but the sanctuary they sought.

When not behind the keyboard, Zanne enjoys travel, photography, hiking, and gardening.  And always, a good story to pass the time.

LINKS

PRESSKIT: https://bit.ly/3U4OenB

WEBSITE:  https://www.zanneraby.com/

FACEBOOK: https://www.facebook.com/zanne.raby

LINKEDIN: https://www.linkedin.com/in/zanne-raby-2b4a9b1bb/

INSTAGRAM: https://www.instagram.com/zanne_raby/

PURCHASE VIA: https://ridgecrestbooks.com/ AND https://amzn.to/3fiZy0m

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GIVEAWAY INFORMATION and RAFFLECOPTER CODE

Zanne Raby will be awarding a $25 Amazon/BN GC to a randomly drawn winner via rafflecopter during the tour.

RAFFLECOPTER:

http://www.rafflecopter.com/rafl/display/28e4345f4445