Today is the release day of Spindrift Gifts by Aidee Ladnier! This is Book 2 in the series started with The Klockwerk Kraken. Aidee will be a guest blogger here on Dec 20. Here’s a teaser about the new story.

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When his memories begin endangering his happily-ever after on Celos, Jimenez is forced to choose between forgetting his lover Teo, or accepting the sometimes painful gifts of Spindrift.

Scars and a tattoo may be the only physical reminders from his years as a slave, but when Jimenez suffers a setback in his medical treatment, the only option is a therapy that will wipe away all his memories of the past including his time with Teo. Teo, torn between supporting his lover’s decisions and the good intentions of his family, sets out to teach Jimenez about Spindrift Gifts and how memories are celebrated on Celos even when they are painful. Can Teo and Jimenez weather the storm to find their happily-ever-after on Celos?

Aidee Ladnier’s new book Spindrift Gifts was released last week. And lucky readers, one of you is going home with your very own copy!

To enter the giveaway, leave a comment on this post. I’ll pick a winner at random next Sunday, December 27. Which is just about the time you’ll be wishing you had a good holiday-themed read to get you through the rest of the weekend.

I’m about halfway through this wonderful story myself and I just had to share an excerpt. There’s still time to pick it up as a holiday treat for that special bartender or tentacle-fetish-having loved one on your list! Read on to be teased.

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Excerpt from Spindrift Gifts by Aidee Ladnier:

“Is it a memory box?”

Teo set it on the table with a clack. “Same principle. It’s our Spindrift gift for the rev. We each put a memory in one to add to the family collection. And then at the gala they all glow on the lighted tree.”

“Tree? Do you grow trees on Celos?”

Teo chuckled. “Not really. It’s a light-painted representation of a tree, like one of those from old Earth. It’s a family tree. Each branch holds the most important memories for the rev from that branch of the family.”

“A shared memory?” Jimenez ran a finger along the smooth top of the tiny cube. It blushed a delicate pink at his touch.

“No. It’s personal, a gift, a painful or a pleasant one. One you share because it hurts, and you smooth the edges by giving it away, or one of your favorites you want others to experience. But you give one from the past rev.”

Their conversation grew hushed. Teo attempted to lighten the mood. He grabbed the leftover paper from his package and folded it into the shape of a little boat.

“I’ve been trying to think of one that would be suitable for family viewing.” He wiggled his eyebrows.

Jimenez glared at him. “That’s not the all we’ve done this rev.”

He picked up the cube and activated it. Teo stared transfixed as Jimenez pulled it close to his mouth and breathed a puff of air over it, his fingers whitening at the tips as he remembered.

Teo wondered which memory put that serene smile on his lover’s face, smoothing the furrows lining his brow. Was it onboard his ship in the Nothing? Or maybe one with Teo on Switchpoint?

“What did you record? Can I see it?” He whispered, unwilling to break the spell of Jimenez’s memory.

Jimenez opened his eyes, and his fingers clutched the small cube. But he smiled at it like it held a secret.

“I’m not sure this is one to give away. Do you have extra cubes?”

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Today I am thrilled to host Aidee Ladnier, one of my favorite writers, whose intriguing new book The Klockwerk Kraken was just released. This book and I are clearly a match made in heaven, between my love of things steampunk and my love of things seafaring. Aidee has insights about the tentacle in literature. I’ll let her explain.

Famous Tentacles in Literature

By Aidee Ladnier

So my new novel, The Klockwerk Kraken, has a tentacled bartender. There, I’ve said it. I wrote a romance novel with a character who has tentacles.

But tentacles have actually been present in literature for a long time. Besides appearing in Norse sagas, creatures with tentacles have had poems, books, even screenplays written about them.

Most lovers of tentacles cite the poem by Alfred, Lord Tennyson, The Kraken:

Below the thunders of the upper deep;
Far, far beneath in the abysmal sea,
His ancient, dreamless, uninvaded sleep
The Kraken sleepeth: faintest sunlights flee
About his shadowy sides: above him swell
Huge sponges of millennial growth and height;
And far away into the sickly light,
From many a wondrous grot and secret cell
Unnumber’d and enormous polypi
Winnow with giant arms the slumbering green.
There hath he lain for ages and will lie
Battening upon huge seaworms in his sleep,
Until the latter fire shall heat the deep;
Then once by man and angels to be seen,

In roaring he shall rise and on the surface die.

Jules Verne’s Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea has a famous scene where Captain Nemo’s submarine is attacked by giant squids. And lovers of horror are well versed in H.P. Lovecraft’s slumbering, tentacled god, Cthulu. Even Herman Melville speaks in Moby Dick about “the great live squid”. Most of the depictions of tentacled beasts are those of slumbering giants on the bottom of the ocean, quiet, until man awakens them.

But my hero, Teo is anything but hiding. He’s one of the few people on his planet that have traveled extensively in the galaxy before settling down at the Switchpoint Waystation, far from home and family. He’s a little lonely, but that quickly changes at the start of my book. I hope you’ll check out The Klockwerk Kraken and meet Teo, my tentacled hero.

BUY LINKS for THE KLOCKWERK KRAKEN:

Brand new in the world this very day! I am most proud to brag about The Clockwork Kraken by Aidee Ladnier, who will be a guest blogger right here in a few days.

In the meantime, be the first to take home your very own copy from the publisher.