#RainbowSnippets: Curious Adventures

image copyright Nadiaforkosh

Happy Saturday! And Happy Autumn too! I hope you all had a fabulous equinox and the
subsequent deluge hasn’t washed you all away! Autumn has definitely arrived with force here and I’ve moved all my wimpy plants indoors before the frosts hit but we still have tomatoes and sunflowers doing well in the garden and bees pottering about 🙂

Here’s my #RainbowSnippets post for this week – if you’re new to this, Rainbow Snippets is a chance to read and share 6 sentences of LGBTQIA+ fiction every Saturday. There’s a huge variety from Steampunk, like mine, to Romance, Fantasy, Paranormal, Comedy and everything in between. You can join the fun and read all the other fabulous snippets at the wonderfully friendly and supportive official facebook group here.
This week I’m snipping from the first book in my Ashton’s Kingdom series, The Curious
Adventures Of Smith And Skarry, which is now available to pre-order on Kindle or free if you sign up to support us on Patreon. Hugest thanks to everyone who has already pre-ordered, I’ve been really blown away by the support from everyone, it really does mean so much, thankyou 😀

This story started life on my kitchen wall, scribbled on the backs of envelopes and slips of paper whenever I got the chance and blue-tacked in place until there wasn’t room for any more and I had to start typing it up! It includes diverse characters from across the gender spectrum and beneath the humorous veneer it asks big questions about the important issues of power, identity and, most importantly,  fine china.

For reference, if you’ve been enjoying the Jack and Marjory snippets, this story happens immediately before those events, so Jack and Marjory are still working down the treacle mine at this point – and the Pirate Captain on the front cover is Jack Diamond who rescues them in book two 🙂
If you’d like some world background you can find it here in the INTRODUCTION which is at the start of the book as well.

Am I over-excited-nervous-babbling? lol, I think I may be…

This is the opening of the first chapter….

“You know what to do?”
“I know what you want me to do.”Jonathan Skarry tugged at his leather gloves and glanced up
and down the street. The rain-licked cobbles winked at him like a militia of snail shells in the
light from the guttering gas lamps overhead. He wasn’t nervous. He was reluctant, certainly, but
his reluctance had nothing whatever to do with getting caught.

The evil overlord Wiz has seized control of all the tea, cake and magic in the universe. In a world crammed with dubious science and cream-powered technology, crippled by sugar tax and loose leaf ration books, overrun by cake smugglers, tea fiends and lemonade dealers, ruled over by Tea Time Lords and policed by vigilante mechanical angels, only a band of truly extraordinary adventurers can bring down this oppressive empire and save the good people of Ire from this tea time tyranny. Could these two would-be wizards, Messrs Smith and Skarry, and their band of land pirates, skywaymen, witches, orphans and other relentless rogues, be the anti-heroes The New World has been waiting for, or have they simply stirred up an enormous storm in a rather tiny teacup?

Wishing you all a most splendiferous week and don’t forget to check in at the #rainbowsnippets facebook group for more fabulous snippets of LGBTQIA+ fiction