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Description of Last Star Standing
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?
Read an excerpt of Last Star Standing
Nothing. Clean as a whistle. Until my massive hand grasped hold of something, something which must have blended into its background so perfectly that I hadn’t even spotted it. Something alive, nestling under the co-pilot’s seat. I couldn’t believe it. A live gromeline. Trembling, possibly with fury, and trying in vain to squeeze back. Grabbing my trophy – I could feel its hot little heart throbbing like an injury against my palm – I hopped out of the plane so fast that my wound protested.
‘Bully!’
Bully raised one eyebrow. Two would have been overkill.
‘Bully, you are not going to believe this. I found a gromeline!’ The gromeline – only about fifteen centimetres – bit my finger, hard, even though I could have easily crushed its entire body with my fist – and probably would have, had I been a tester, and not merely disguised as one.
Feisty little gromeline. I flicked it lightly with my sausage-sized finger. When it protested, I growled, ‘Cheese it, munchkin,’ though I could feel it struggling obstreperously against my palm.
Bully was intrigued. ‘Is it genuine?’ ‘Of course it’s genuine. It just bit me, didn’t it?’
Bully probably considered this no proof. But they’re rarer than clean air these days and his fascination was obvious. Now gromelines come from the farthest galaxy so far discovered, can speak any tongue and own enviable mental powers. They are also brave to the point of stupidity and ludicrously small. This one was mouse-coloured – they can be spectacular – with tiny red eyes. Few humans have ever seen one.
Interview with Author Spaulding Taylor
What is something you’ve lied about?
My hair colour.
Who is the last person you hugged?
My husband, of course. Before that, my dachshunds.
What are you reading now?
Oh, good question. What am I not reading? As I have the attention span of a really dumb gnat, I am reading:
- Salt Lick by Lulu Allison (short-listed, Women’s prize for fiction, great book)
- The first draft of a thriller by a close friend (pre-publication, for errors)
- A Perfect Spy by le Carre. For about the 19th
Depends on my mood, which one I pick up.
How do you come up with the titles to your books?
With appalling difficulty. Hardest part of writing.
Honestly, it’s a nightmare, and it almost always goes wrong. My very first novel (Sunday Times in 1997: “Masterful!”) was entitled While the Music Lasts. (In fact, I’m about to release it in a new edition.)
Great title, you have to admit.
TOO great, really, since when all kinds of writers have since swiped it from T.S. Eliot. People writing about the music industry. Soppy romance scribblers. I was the first – but I won’t be the last!
I couldn’t even think of a name for its sequel, so the famous publisher/owner of Orion – it was either Weidenfeld or his wife, as I remember – briefly removing the cigar from his mouth, told my agent: “Ghost Music’ll sell”.
So, Ghost Music it was.
As for Last Star Standing, I was looking for something that would express Aiden’s lonelier struggles – within himself as well as with all the aliens, betrayals etc. – which he had to deal with. I checked and checked and could spot no book even similar. A month after Unbound published mine, guess what?
Yeah, The Last Star Standing came out – all about some stupid singing talent competition.
You couldn’t make it up.
Share your dream cast for your book.
Oh, wow, haven’t a clue. Aiden would be tough to cast, as a half-Indigenous Australian. The accent would have to be right but not intrusive. But I’m sure there’s some genius out there who’d ace it.
Bully (being a fug) would probably have to be re-sized, as Frodo is, in Lord of the Rings. Bit of a problem. I have a clear idea of what a fug looks like, but would need to work with artists, really.
As for Pavlina, someone tiny, brilliant and feisty, but the right actress? – I don’t know!
About Author Spaulding Taylor
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 is 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.
Links:
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Amazon author page: https://www.amazon.com/Spaulding-Taylor/e/B08TRLNW31
OR https://www.amazon.com/Alice-Mcveigh/e/B07TDKZPVT
Amazon.co.uk: www.amazon.co.uk/Alice-Mcveigh/e/B07TDKZPVT?ref=sr_ntt_srch_lnk_1&qid=1610184384&sr=1-1
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Video for Last Star Standing:
@alicemcveigh0 Last Star Standing: awardwinning action/adventure
Sales link: Book will be on sale for $0.99 during the tour.
One randomly chosen winner via rafflecopter will win a $50 Amazon/BN.com gift card.