This post is part of a virtual book tour organized by Goddess Fish Promotions. The author will be awarding a $10 Amazon/BN GC to a randomly drawn winner. Click on the tour banner to see the other stops on the tour.

I don’t have the easiest time staying focused. I often get lost in my head, distracted by something on my phone, or crave something specific to eat or drink. As a result, I’ll often only write a single page, paragraph, or even sentence during a writing session before I need to take a small break. What the break entails depends on where I’m writing, but it always involves going on the move. If I’m at home, I’ll pace around my house for a few minutes. I’m at the library, I’ll get up, chat with some of the librarians, and flip through the new releases. And if I’m at the coffee shop, I’ll pack up my laptop and take a walk around the block to avoid giving into temptation and stop myself from buying a muffin or pastry.

Because I need to immerse myself back into the scene I was working on after taking a break, I re-read everything I’ve already written during the session before I continue. The more I re-read, the better I understand my own characters and how they speak and, the further I get into writing a book, the longer I’m able to write at once, without a break, because I no longer even need to think about what my characters would say next. This is what results in an aspect of my writing that I’m not entirely happy about, but that I’ve embraced. Dialogue is my specialty, it’s what I love, and I’ll often have long stretches of it with only minimal action. I of course still do my best to make the action I do include meaningful to the characters, but I do sometimes get lost in the conversations I write. Fortunately, I never only write a single draft, and I flesh out my scenes to the best of my ability during my second pass.

Layla N’gwa is finally free to attend art school and live a life of peace. She’s sipping spinach smoothies in the quad with her new friends, attending protests against the ongoing war, and studying to fulfill her dream of becoming a great glassblower.

Layla’s former friend, Kaya Langstone Bythora-the boy-band-loving cyborg princess of the Cykebian Empire-has embraced being evil since killing Yael, and now acts as the ultimate sword of her mother, Empress Molina. With Kaya’s help, her mother will become the absolute ruler of the universe by winning the war with the Utozin Authority. Kaya wishes she wasn’t doomed to be a monster but feels resigned to her fate and just seeks acceptance from her only friend, Layla.

Layla loves her new life, but she can’t stand back and watch as Kaya is used as a weapon and her old professor conquers planet after planet. As a war rages with the fate of all life in the balance, Layla and Kaya find themselves on opposite sides. Kaya may be the most powerful cyborg ever designed, but Layla has some new tricks up her sleeve. Has absolute order snuffed out all freedom, or is there still room among the stars for a little chaos? Only together can Layla and Kaya find the answer.

Enjoy an Excerpt

Good morning, human!

I yawned as I sat up in my bed and stretched my arms out, reaching for the sun. “Good morning, Juri.”

Leaping out of bed and greeting the day, I pulled my curtains open to reveal the beautiful sky. It was a perfect, light shade of magenta that made the stunning cobalt sun stand out even more than it usually did as it rose.

Proquenna was a beautiful world, with fabulous flora and adorable fauna, and Fexxa University’s campus was the prettiest spot on the whole planet. Every student here was an elite artist, and we were all permitted to put up our pieces wherever we wanted. The shelves in my own dorm room were, of course, filled exclusively with some of my awesome creations, but once I stepped out into the dormitory halls, and especially once I stepped outside the building, I couldn’t turn around without seeing a masterpiece of a painting or sculpture created by one of my peers or instructors.

It had been the perfect environment for me to study and truly hone my craft. Thanks to the instruction of Ms. Bunny, the reading assignments others might have skimmed through, and the vast resources offered by the school, I wasn’t the same glassblower I’d been a year ago.

This school was everything I’d always dreamed of. By the time I graduated in three years, I was going to be renowned as one of the best glassblowers in the universe. I may have valued the craft over gidgits, but if I did get super rich off of my work, I’d be able to rub it in g-gma’s face. Hopefully, she’d gotten over the whole blackmail thing and wasn’t plotting to kill me.

What are you standing around for? Juri asked. Get dressed and go get us some foooooood!

I nodded. Under different circumstances, I might have.

About the Author Robyn Singer is a lifelong New Yorker, and since she was a kid playing with her action figures, all she’s wanted to do is tell stories. She went to SUNY Purchase to get a degree in Playwriting & Screenwriting with a minor in Film and has produced several comic books, but she’s always had her eye on becoming a published novelist.

As an Autistic, bisexual trans woman, diversity and inclusion in stories are vitally important to her, and she seeks to represent as many groups as possible in her work. While she wants to show characters of marginalized groups experiencing joy, she also draws inspiration from real-world problems which bother her.

The Sunrisers was her debut novel. The Order of the Banshee is book 2 in the The Ricochet Trilogy. Robyn was the author in residence for the first quarter of 2022 for Cinnabar Moth Literary Collections. She writes novels and short stories of all genres and for all ages, and she continues to produce comic books. Her ongoing series, Final Gamble, began publication by Band of Bards in 2022.

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This post is part of a virtual book tour organized by Goddess fish Promotions. Robyn Singer will be awarding a $10 Amazon/BN GC to a randomly drawn winner via rafflecopter during the tour. Click on the tour banner to see the other stops on the tour.

A question like this is a tough one, especially as I don’t read nearly as many novels nowadays as I did when I was younger. I’m sure many of us in our 20s and 30s can recall speeding through a book in a day or two when we were kids, but now needing a week or month to finish one. Let’s say that I’m a passionate reader with no professional connection to my publisher, Cinnabar Moth, and The Order of the Banshee happened to come across my dash as a
recommendation.

Based on the gorgeous cover, my attention would immediately be drawn. I almost exclusively read books with female protagonists, the framing makes it seem like there’s a deep emotional connection between the two women on the cover, the shattered sword between them is a dynamic visual, and the women’s contrasting red and bluish-black hair, combined with their depressed facial expressions, would make me think of my favorite tv show in recent years,
Arcane. Looking at the description of the book, my attention would be further captured. The tagline hinting at this being a story set after “Happily Ever After” would sound right up my alley.

The first paragraph of the summary establishing that the women on the cover are married and that this is a space opera with found family, and a thief as the main protagonist would almost certainly seal the deal for me, but it would also make me question if this book was a sequel.

Sure enough, after a quick Google search and most likely a cup of coffee, I’d find that The Order of the Banshee is a sequel to last year’s, The Sunrisers. I might ask the person who put the book on my dash if The Order of the Banshee could be read on its own, but even when they said, “Yes”, I’d still probably want to read The Sunrisers first, so I could see how the series
leads, “professional thief and amateur noodle critic” Yael Pavnick and former military captain, Molina Langstone, first got together. Lesbian childhood friends to enemies to lovers would be impossible for me to pass up.

I wrote these books to be everything I want in stories, with the series protagonist, Yael, being specifically designed to be everything little me would have wanted in a hero. Yes, I would absolutely read both The Order of the Banshee and its predecessor, The Sunrisers, even if I’d never heard of me. I suppose it wasn’t such a difficult question after all.

It’s been five years since Yael and Molina reunited. Yael is one of the richest and most infamous thieves in the universe and a member of the Order of the Banshee. She is rising through the ranks of the elite organization with her wife and her ride-or-die best friends, Aarif and P’Ken, at her side, and she’s even running her own school for thieves. Molina, former captain in the universe’s premiere peacekeeping organization, the Sunrisers, is happily married to Yael and tells herself that’s enough.

Their seemingly perfect lives are interrupted when they receive news of the death of Molina’s father. When Molina returns home for his funeral, she reunites with her former friend and now enemy: Kaybell, the emperor of the Cykebian Empire. Kaybell, eager to mend the relationship, informs Molina that her father was murdered and offers to help Molina find those responsible and bring them to justice.

While Molina and Kaybell hunt the people responsible for her father’s death, Yael is hunted by an invincible assassin – one with a terrible secret. These two seemingly unrelated events are more connected than Yael or Molina could possibly imagine.

Enjoy an Excerpt

Yael was never peaceful in her sleep. Sometimes it was adorable, as she’d blurt out lines from her ridiculous dreams and punch and kick the air. Other times it was annoying as Hell, as she’d sleepwalk, go to the fridge, and stuff food in my mouth. And usually it was weird food she and Aarif liked that I wouldn’t normally touch. But sometimes, it wasn’t adorable or annoying. Sometimes it was scary.

“Ahh!” Yael shrieked, shaking her knees. “Ahhh!”

“Yael, baby, wake up,” I said, getting on top of her and resting my hands on her face. “Wake up!”

Yael’s eyes jolted open and she tried to throw me off her. That had happened a few times before, but I’d learned how to grab onto her so I stayed in place. As Yael panted, she wrapped her arms around my waist and squeezed me like one of the stuffed animals she’d had as a kid.

“It’s okay,” I whispered. “It’s okay. You’re home. You aren’t back there.”

Yael’s warm breath continued to blow against my ear. “It hurts. It shouldn’t, but it does. Every other week…I’m on the Noriker. And every time I close my eyes, I see that bitch.” Yael roared, slamming her fists down on the bed, shaking the entire room. “I could have killed her. Instead, she’s the fucking emperor.”

About the Author: Robyn Singer is a lifelong New Yorker, and since she was a kid playing with her action figures, all she’s wanted to do is tell stories. She went to SUNY Purchase to get a degree in Playwriting & Screenwriting with a minor in Film and has produced several comic books, but she’s always had her eye on becoming a published novelist.

As an Autistic, bisexual trans woman, diversity and inclusion in stories are vitally important to her, and she seeks to represent as many groups as possible in her work. While she wants to show characters of marginalized groups experiencing joy, she also draws inspiration from real-world problems which bother her.

The Sunrisers (Cinnabar Moth Publishing, November 2022) is her debut novel. Order of the Banshee is book in the The Ricochet Trilogy. Robyn was the author in residence for quester 1 of 20222 for Cinnabar Moth Literary Collections. She writes novels and short stories of all genres and for all ages, and she continues to produce comic books. Her ongoing series, Final Gamble, began publication by Band of Bards in 2022.

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