Friday Reading Day (On Saturday) - Skythane

Hi all! Slight shift in the reading day since this is part of a blog tour for J. Scott Coatsworth's Skythane - a new science fiction novel from Dreamspinner! A little bit from near the beginning...

Also, a little bit of an extra today as Scott shares some of his process and what Skythane (then called something else) looked like originally!

Things Change
J. Scott Coatsworth
 
In the process of writing Skythane, my first novel due out on February 17th, I went through a number of versions before the final book. There’s:
 
—The original few scenes written in the nineties
—The slightly longer version I started in 2014
—The half-novel, written in early 2015
—The NaNoWriMo from scratch version written in November 2015
—The two additional drafts reworked before submission
—The three edits after acceptance
 
A lot can change over so much time and so many versions.
 
So I thought it would be fun to dig up a bit from an early draft, when Jameson’s wings were grafted in rather than grown from his own body; before there was a Titania; before Quince even existed as a character.
 
Here’s the scene when Jameson first gets his wings. Hope you enjoy it!
 
——--
 
Jameson awoke, groggy, his eyes encrusted with too much sleep, his muscles aching.  He lay on his stomach on a hard pallet, and the air smelled of grease.  His shoulders throbbed painfully.

He rubbed the sleep out of his eyes, looking around blearily at the grey, soulless room he found himself in.
 
Light slanted in from dirty windows set high above him - some sort of warehouse, maybe?
There was something laying on top of him, its weight pressing him down.  He reached behind himself to push it off, and pain flared unexpectedly across his upper back.
 
Had there been some kind of accident?  He pushed through the pain, like he'd learned to do when his father had hit him, shoving it into a little box.
 
How had he gotten here?  The last few hours were fuzzy.  He'd come to Oberon to investigate something and had met a man…  Xander.  He’d followed the native into the Slander.  Something had happened after that, but he couldn’t bring it back.
 
"It takes a bit of getting used to," someone said from the other side of the room.
 
He turned his head and saw an angel. The man was shirtless, his bare chest chiseled like Jameson knew his would never be.
 
He was silhouetted against the outside light, and his wings, covered with ebony-black feathers, were extended on either side of his body.  He was beautiful.
 
Jameson squeezed his eyes shut.  "What takes getting used to?  Who are you?"
 
The man laughed, a rich, deep laugh, kneeling to touch his face.  “Name’s Xander, or did you already forget?  And the wings are what takes getting used to, of course.  Didn't you notice?"
Jameson jumped backwards, and his own set of wings flared out to either side of his body.
He looked at the beautiful white feathers and fainted dead-away.
 
—————--
 
My new novel, Skythane, is just out – and it combines my love of sci fi and secret reveals and MM romance. I hope you enjoy it!

Skythane
Publisher: Dreamspinner Press
by J. Scott Coatsworth
Cover Artist: Anne Caine
Release Date: 2/17/17
Dreamspinner - eBook
Dreamspinner - paperback
Amazon
Barnes & Noble
Kobo
iBooks

​
Blurb:
 
Jameson Havercamp, a psych from a conservative religious colony, has come to Oberon—unique among the Common Worlds—in search of a rare substance called pith. He’s guided through the wilds on his quest by Xander Kinnison, a handsome, cocky wing man with a troubled past.
 
Neither knows that Oberon is facing imminent destruction. Even as the world starts to fall apart around them, they have no idea what’s coming—or the bond that will develop between them as they race to avert a cataclysm.
 
Together, they will journey to uncover the secrets of this strange and singular world, even as it takes them beyond the bounds of reality itself to discover what truly binds them together.

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