Kinetics by Nathaniel J. Koszer - Book Tour - Guest Post - Giveaway - Enter Daily!

Kinetics
by Nathaniel J. Koszer

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GENRE:   Sci-Fi

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BOOK BLURB:

After stoking rebellions across the globe, six super-powered LO-ECs dealt a massive blow to the military by disabling their worldwide communication tower. But in doing so, they suffered grave injuries, and Spidre, the world leader, will not let them rest. As he desperately clings to power, there is only one course of action for the LO-ECs: hide and heal, then finally bring the fight to Spidre’s front door.

Breaching Spidre’s force field will require splitting up and launching simultaneous surprise attacks all over the world. And in some of these places, the military is the least of the LO-ECs’ concerns. They’ll also face legions of robots controlled by an eccentric oligarch, guerilla outfits led by their own super-powered LO-ECs, and the ever-present threat of being discovered and bombed into dust by a world leader with nothing left to lose.

If their power is enough to survive all of this, the reward for the LO-ECs is a confrontation with Spidre at his compound, complete with all of the secrets and plans he has amassed for the last twenty years.

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EXCERPT TWO:

“We’ve got to leave now!” Naren yelled to Edgar and Symon as he landed and set Sera down. She was shaky, but able to stand on her own. Symon and Edgar were walking onto the field from a tunnel in the southeast corner of the stadium. Both of them had their hands wrapped around the grips of their elcycles, powerful electric motorcycles powered by their LO-EC energy. Walking with them was Eric, the person who had taken up the role of leading the rebellion in Pittsburgh.

“You’re leaving!? After what just happened!?” Eric screamed.

“That happened because we’re here!” Symon snapped back. “We need to get out of this city, and do it loudly enough that everyone knows we’re gone.”

“Sera told me the plan before she took off. Together we programmed the coordinates for her garden in New Orleans,” Edgar said.

“We aren’t going to New Orleans,” Naren replied. Sera’s head snapped up to look at him, then as she realized the issue, her head sank.

“Isn’t it the closest place that we have a safe hideout?” Edgar asked. “They just tried to bomb us here. If we get spotted entering New Orleans, the same thing will happen. It’d be the same no matter where we go. If there are peacekeepers there, then it isn’t safe now.”

“So where do we go?” Sera asked, her eyes filled with tears.

“Why are you all standing around?! We have to get to Symon’s hideout!” Nadine screamed as she and Victor set their feet on the ground. She was happy and relieved to know she could now carry him with little effort. The last time she had tried, it was almost a disaster.

The plan clicked into place in everyone’s head. They had spent weeks at Symon’s hideout, an old house in an abandoned city called San Diego. It was now their best chance at hiding out without risking the lives of others.

“Eric, we’re going to blast right through the peacekeeper’s front line, make sure they know we’ve left the city. Go up into the lookout and signal to us if you see any targets we can hit,” Naren directed.

“Victor, you’ll be at the front. When we get the signal from Eric up high, you mow the road,” Naren said. Victor nodded.

“Edgar, you’ll be on an elcycle in the middle, with Sera riding in front of you,” Naren continued. “If anyone gets close, you know what to do. Symon, you’ll be in the back providing suppressive fire to our rear as we escape. Nadine and I will be up high and go wherever we’re needed.”

When Naren concluded his directions, everyone moved with haste. Edgar and Symon re-programmed the elcycles to go to San Diego and put them into position at the north of the field. Symon reached into one of the cargo bags on the elcycle and pulled out the retrofitted peacekeeper armor part that he’d had since the first major battle in Chicago. He slid his arm into the piece of armor and when it connected with the microtransformer in his hand, the mounted machine gun whirred to life, ready to fire once again. Naren helped Sera onto the other elcycle. Edgar hopped on behind her, and they were ready to go.

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GUEST POST:

My new novel Kinetics and its direct prequel Latency, which was published in 2024, would be nothing but boring exposition were it not for the six main protagonists that give it life. I wanted to take some time on this tour to give readers a chance to learn about or brush up on these characters so three of the tour stops, including this one, feature some quick character bios! Sera and Naren are featured over on Long and Short Reviews (LASR), and Victor and Symon can be found on Gina Rae Mitchell’s blog. Here on Fabulous and Brunette, I will be exploring Nadine and Edgar more, so please read on to learn more about them.

NADINE

Nadine is an offensive powerhouse. She is rippling muscles from head to toe and a master at hand-to-hand combat. Thanks to her abilities as a LO-EC, she is also able to emit bursts of energy from her hands and feet, which she uses to give her punches and kicks significant additional pep. During the events of Latency, she eventually learns how to use this power to create flight. And as if all that wasn’t enough, she also rivals her twin brother Naren in terms of strategizing capabilities.

Nadine and Naren were six years old when the LO-EC extermination campaign came to their hometown of Chicago. Their father, a former military officer, led a failed rebellion against the would-be military occupiers. Before the military could get their hands on Nadine and Naren, he put them on a train out of the city to live with relatives who were safe from harm.

Twenty years later, Naren had joined his military himself using an altered version of their father’s ID. Meanwhile, Nadine stayed off the radar and set up an underground net access point to find out more about their history and potentially locate other folks who wanted to see the militarized world government overthrown. When Naren found a lead on another LO-EC survivor in New Orleans, he left Nadine behind until the opportunity to reunite presented itself.

Nadine waited patiently for eighteen months until finally, a very risky message came to her over the net access point she created. It was Naren, telling her to enter an upcoming fighting tournament and use the prize money to reach New Orleans. At the tournament, Nadine met two more LO-ECs, Symon and Edgar, hoping to use the tournament to their own advantages.

Nadine accidentally reveals her powers during the tournament, and Symon and Edgar help her evade capture. Edgar further assists in getting her to New Orleans, where they help Naren help his girlfriend, another LO-EC named Sera, to destroy three androids that killed her parents during the extermination campaign twenty years prior. After that, the LO-ECs go from city to city dismantling the existing military presence and stoking rebellions. It is during this time that Nadine and Edgar fall in love, and also nearly lose each other.

EDGAR

While he isn’t quite at the same level as Nadine, Edgar’s power, drive, and willingness to learn have turned him into a force to be reckoned with. He is the physically largest of the LO-ECs and built like a brick house. His LO-EC abilities enable him to create blades of pure energy that stretch about four feet out from each hand. When he is first introduced in Latency he is strong, but lacking in real combat training, and can only create an energy blade on one hand or the other, not both. As he trained, he was able to produce more energy, and by the end of Latency is using both blades with certain and deadly precision.

Edgar largely stumbles into the main plot by accident. He joins the same fighting tournament as Nadine, hoping to use the prize winnings to live independently for awhile after having had a run in with the military that split him from his caretakers. Thinking he was the only LO-EC left alive, he assumed he would be the strongest tournament entrant by a long shot. Unfortunately for him Nadine had the same idea. In their fight, Nadine had the clear advantage, and Edgar tries to get the upper hand by using his powers. Nadine responded by using her own powers on reflex, but her use of them was noticed by the onlooking military forces. She was captured but Edgar managed to escape thanks to intervention by Symon, another LO-EC who was using the chaos of the tournament to find some rare goods he wanted.

Since Nadine was a fellow LO-EC and captured because of him, Edgar felt compelled to help her, and Symon agreed to do so as well. They launched an assault on the military convoy transporting her. After a brief but tense fight with Spidre, the high ruler of earth and a fellow LO-EC, they escaped and fled East. It was at this point that Nadine finally told Edgar about the message from her brother Naren, and her need to get to New Orleans to help him. Edgar agreed to tag along and was indispensable in the ensuing fight with the androids.

Edgar continued to join the rest of the LO-ECs on their tear across the world liberating cities from military occupation. One of these fights nearly caused him to lose his life, but the experience solidified his and Nadine’s feelings for one another and their desire to have a romantic relationship.

Thanks for reading about these characters that I’ve put my heart and soul into. Please be sure to check out the bios on Sera and Naren on LASR and Victor and Symon over at Gina Rae Mitchell’s blog. I hope that those who have been inspired to pick up Kinetics and/or Latency enjoy the story!

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AUTHOR BIO & LINKS:

Nate grew up in Brooklyn NY, but now calls the Bronx home along with his wife and their sons. Nate grew up on all things sci-fi. Partly due to his chronic illness, Nate always had a special place in his heart for the X-Men, and especially the invulnerable Wolverine. This was heavy inspiration for his first novel, Latency a superhero sci-fi story which released March 5, 2024. His second novel, Kinetics, will release on March 4, 2025.

Website:

https://natekoszer.com

BlueSky:

https://bsky.app/profile/natejklol.bsky.social

Twitter:

https://twitter.com/natejklol

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AMAZON BUY LINKS:

Amazon US Kindle eBook:

https://www.amazon.com/Kinetics-Nathaniel-Koszer-ebook/dp/B0DP3JWQZF

Amazon CA Kindle eBook:

https://www.amazon.ca/Kinetics-Nathaniel-Koszer-ebook/dp/B0DP3JWQZF

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GIVEAWAY:

Nathaniel will be awarding a $10 Amazon OR Barnes and Noble Gift Card (Winner's Choice!!!) to a randomly drawn winner via Rafflecopter during the tour.

a Rafflecopter giveaway

Latency by Nathaniel J. Koszer - Book Tour - Guest Post - Giveaway - Enter Daily!

Latency

by Nathaniel J. Koszer

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GENRE:   Sci Fi Biotech

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BOOK BLURB:

Sera is a LO-EC, a human who gained superpowers as an unintended side effect of a biotechnological breakthrough. Her unique abilities allowed her to survive while others like her, including her parents, were exterminated by a world government fearful of their potential.

After decades of hiding, she meets Naren, another superpowered survivor who has infiltrated the ranks of the military. Together, they form a plan to unite with other surviving LO-ECs, claim vengeance against the forces who murdered their families, and ultimately stoke a worldwide rebellion against the government that wanted them dead.

The entirety of 26th century Earth’s armed forces stand in their way: Soldiers equipped with terrifying weaponry, armies with electromagnetic cannons, merciless bloodthirsty androids, and Spidre, the World Leader with unnatural abilities of his own. The world brought Sera and the other LO-ECs pain and loss, and they’re determined to return it in kind.

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EXCERPT ONE:

In the basement of a skyscraper hundreds of stories high, a constant shaking and groaning accompanied the cacophony of breaking glass and falling bricks from the street above. A man and a woman had spent the night here, fearing those sounds meant their building was on the verge of collapse. Finally, the sun rose and the sounds gave way to stillness. The death of the noises gave life to new fears, in that now the man and woman had to take action.

“Are there any sort of supplies on the cycles?” the man asked. He was bleary-eyed, his face was flush, and even the simple task of standing up seemed to be a struggle.

“I doubt it,” the woman replied, her expression as beleaguered as his. “And you’re sure there was nothing in these boxes?” she continued, glancing around the small storage room.

The man shook his head. “Just lots of cleaning supplies. And we can’t risk going back upstairs,” he replied. “I can’t even hear the big one lumbering around, that has to mean they’re searching another building. We need to move now. We’ll worry about supplies after we get out of New Orleans, and after it feels safe.”

The woman nodded and walked over to one smaller pile of boxes. She pulled them away and the room lit up in an orange glow. The boxes had been covering a young girl, no more than six years old, whose skin had trails of orange light swirling across her arms, legs, and face.

“We need to leave, sweetie. We’re going to find our cycles in the garage, Ok?”

The little girl nodded.

“Do you remember that woman? Alison?” she asked the girl. “Do you remember where she and her friends live?”

The little girl nodded slowly, while the man’s face furrowed with skepticism.

“If anything happens to us, you go straight to her. Do you understand?”

“She can’t go to them!” the man exclaimed in an elevated whisper. “They’re a bunch of fanatics!”

“They are, but they will keep her safe!” the woman responded.

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GUEST POST:

Everyone loves a hero! Tell us all about this genuine character and the inspiration behind their development.

Latency is a science fiction thriller with six(!) protaganists all with unique personalities and superpowers. They all get to show off in their own way throughout the story, but it is one character’s desire for revenge that leads to all six characters finding each other and uniting for a greater cause. That character is Sera, and in addition to causing the inciting incident, she also has the most diverse set of inspirations for her character design and development.

For those who haven’t read Latency yet, it takes place in the 25th century, and focuses on six LO-ECs, humans who have gained superpowers through a malfunction of biotechnology, and are now considered too dangerous for the government to allow to live. Sera is one of the LO-ECs. She can fly, glowing orange swirls of energy visibly ebb and flow within her skin, and she can forcibly expel that energy at will, creating violent bursts of energy that act similar to a bomb blast. She is about five feet tall, skinny, and would be considered African or African American complexion by today’s racial demographics (more on this later).

The initial idea for the character that became Sera is practically ancient history. In elementary school, I was obsessed with superhero teams (think the X-men and TMNT) and created my own characters that I would invent little adventures for in my head. One character was called Firefly, and her powers resembled what fireflies do in real life. She could fly, she glowed, and she had light based powers that could blind people. Over the years, thanks in large part to the Jean Grey’s Dark Phoenix arc in X-Men and Carol Danvers’ run as Captain Marvel, Firefly’s powers became the energy blast they are today. The look and feel of the energy blast is inspired by Dragonball Z, specifically Vegeta’s massive suicide explosion during the Majin Buu story arc. It is a huge blast of energy that launches out in all directions, with Vegeta/Sera in the center of it.

The origin story for Sera’s power and the rest of the LO-ECs was inspired almost exclusively by The Matrix. In that movie, humanity has been enslaved by AI robots, and human body heat and electrical synapses are used as fuel by the machines. I was fascinated by that concept, and always thought it would be interesting to see a plot where humans harnessed that power instead of machines. I waited a long time, eager to see a famous writer or producer think up that plot idea themselves, but it never came to pass. Eventually I got sick of waiting and wrote it down myself, and that became Latency.

Sera’s character design has some inspiration from other science fiction media, but a lot of it was also born out of the story itself. Her height and build came from, ironically enough, the TV show Firefly. In that show there is a female character named River Tam, played by actress Summer Glau. River is about five feet tall, ninety-five pounds, and a relentless, unstoppable hand-to-hand fighter. The size and skill of her opponent did not matter compared to her ferocity. I adored that idea. The concept of someone small, especially a small woman, being by far the most dominant physical force in the storyline was the coolest concept I had ever come across. So, when it came time to write Latency, I couldn’t imagine Sera being any other body type.

She became a black woman through the story writing process itself. Since the story takes place in the 25th century, I figured and research confirmed by that time in history most of today’s races wouldn’t exist. They would have intermingled so much that no one race could be identified. At the same time, I felt it was important for the reader to know that the characters were what we would consider mixed race today. That meant finding a genuine way for it to come up in conversation. The problem was, if everyone on earth had the same skin color, why would skin color ever come up as a discussion topic? My solution to this was to choose one character to have a different skin color, just through random genetic anomaly as a reference point for conversation. With Sera’s skin already being written as having moving, glowing swirls all over it, making her a black woman made for a cool mental image, and with that her current design was complete.

I hope everyone enjoyed reading about the many ways that Sera became the amazing character you will experience on the pages of Latency. If you haven’t picked up Latency already, I hope this exploration of one of it’s badass characters inspires you to do so!

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AUTHOR BIO:

Nate grew up in Brooklyn NY, but now calls the Bronx home along with his wife and their sons. Nate grew up on all things sci-fi. Partly due to his chronic illness, Nate always had a special place in his heart for the X-Men, and especially the invulnerable Wolverine. This was heavy inspiration for his first novel, Latency a superhero sci-fi story to be released March 5, 2024.

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CONNECT WITH NATE:

Website:

https://natekoszer.com

Bluesky:

https://bsky.app/profile/natejklol.bsky.social

X:

https://twitter.com/natejklol

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BOOK BUY LINKS:

Amazon:

https://www.amazon.com/Latency-Nathaniel-Koszer/dp/1962308073

Barnes and Noble:

https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/book/1144430187

Smashwords eBook:

https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/1489470

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GIVEAWAY INFO:

Nathaniel will award a $10 Amazon OR Barnes and Noble Gift Card (Winner's Choice!!!) to a randomly drawn winner via Rafflecopter during the tour.

a Rafflecopter giveaway