By: Sharon Bayliss
Genre: New Adult Dystopian Romance
Publisher: Curiosity Quills Press
Release Date: March 2, 2013
Buy Now: Amazon | BN
When King of the Texas Empire kidnaps Warren's brother, Warren embarks into a still Wild West to save him. On his journey, he makes a discovery that changes his life forever—he and his brother are long-lost members of the Texas royal family and the King wants them both dead.
He gets help from an activist Texan named Lena, who's itching to take on the King and happens to be a beautiful firecracker Warren can't stay away from. Convincing her he's not one of the bad guys becomes harder when a mysterious energy stirs in his body, turning his brain into a hive of emotions and memories—not all his own.
A legacy of violence is not all he inherited from the brutal Kings of Texas. The myth that the royal family possesses supernatural powers may not be myth at all.
Gone are the days when choosing a major was a big deal. Now Warren must save his brother and choose whether or not to be King, follow a King, or die before he can retire his fake ID.
Excerpt:
Lena agreed with
the people who hated Texans on one count—Texans were like cockroaches, but only
because they didn't go down easy. Texans survived everything. And they never
forgot . . . anything. Remember the Alamo. Remember Goliad. Remember the
Mexican-Texan War. Remember the Gold War. And so on and so forth. Texans stayed
alive no matter what, through many years of devastating economic depression,
countless natural disasters, and nine wars, including the Texas Civil War, the
First and Second American-Texan Wars, and then, finally, a catastrophic bombing
of their capital fourteen years ago. If that meant they were like cockroaches, Lena
could live with that. Cockroaches existed long before the humans and would probably
exist long after. As the saying went, "At the end of time, all that's left
will be cockroaches and Texans."
The Texas Empire
had only one rightful destiny, freedom from the tyranny of Wilde royal family as
an independent democratic nation, and Lena planned to live to see it happen. In
fact, she would make damn well sure of it. She didn't care that as an
eighteen-year-old girl just out of the foster care system, she looked like she
belonged behind a pair of pom-poms instead of behind a podium. In fact, all
this worked to her advantage. People saw her as a sad, sweet, little orphan.
She used this quality to sneak up on big bad people her whole life, and
recently it had paid off big time.
The Texas Freedom
Campaign chose her as one of their spokespeople, a group of camera-friendly
young people with tear-jerking stories of survival who toured the United States
getting support for their home nation. Which meant she now got to work for the
TFC and earn an impressive college scholarship. In the fall, she would study Political
Science, with a minor in History, at the University of Virginia.
Lena rubbed her
bare arms. Her tank top and flip-flops made her self-conscious. She considered
herself a political figure, not a lost college co-ed. With all her big talk
though, right now, she had to admit that more than air conditioning had caused
goose bumps to erupt all over her arms. Lena didn't know why the
arrogant-looking guy in the black suit had called her safe; that couldn't be
further from the truth.
The United
States government and most of its people considered her a dangerous radical,
but that didn't bother her much anymore. The Blue Scare hatemongering of the
twentieth century had led many people, especially the stupid ones, to believe horrible
things about Texas; many thought that cattle would do a better job running a
free nation than Texans. That hate ran off her skin like water. But last week,
a whole new enemy came into her life—the only people less in favor of a free,
democratic Texas than the United States—the Wildes. The TFC wanted to help a
forgotten territory build a democratic government, but now the movement seemed
like a revolution against the Texas monarchy, and historically, those ended . .
. poorly. Lena liked nothing more than taking down the big, bad guy . . . the
bigger and badder, the better . . . but taking down the King? She loved a
challenge, but she also wanted to live to see nineteen.
Sharon Bayliss is a native of Austin, Texas and works her day job in the field of social work. When she’s not writing, she enjoys living in her “happily-ever-after” with her husband and two young sons. She can be found eating Tex-Mex on patios, wearing flip-flops, and playing in the mud (which she calls gardening). You can connect with Sharon at www.facebook.com/authorsharonbayliss and www.sharonbayliss.com.
Twitter: https://twitter.com/sharonbayliss
Google +: https://plus.google.com/u/0/103722620541134203282
