Welcome to one of the April 14th stops on the blog tour for Earth Arrested by D. L. Richardson, organized by Silver Dagger Book Tours. Be sure to follow the rest of the tour for excerpt spotlights, reviews, other author guest posts, and a giveaway! More on that at the end of this post.
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Inspirations for the Earth Quarantined series
I’m sitting here on a rainy day – actually it has been a rainy week in Australia, with torrential rain. A great day for watching movies, reading a book, and writing a book. As I sit curled up under the covers, I am writing book 3 in the Earth Quarantined series. I have a book on the bed beside me, which I stop to read every hour. I love sci-fi, always have ever since I first watched Star Wars, Logan’s Run, Space 1999, and Planet of the Apes on TV. Being a fan of sci-fi was a huge inspiration for my writing, and it still is. I wanted to share with you a few books and TV shows that have helped me with writing the Earth Quarantined series.
The Passage by Justin Cronin. This is a well-written saga. It goes deep into the lives of the characters. It’s very suspenseful in places, and sometimes the pacing is slow and rich in description and emotion, yet there is often something happening to push the story along. I’m currently reading this while writing Book 3, Earth Reclaimed and this book is helping me bring my characters to life.
Altered Carbon, the Netflix series, season 1. This is the story of a man who is brought back to the real world to solve a crime. I remember watching this TV show and I was riveted. But I also realized that Earth Quarantined lacked the same ‘drive’. The characters in my book had a dilemma but nothing to solve. As soon as I gave them a puzzle to solve – why did the dead man try to escape to a world that he believed was contaminated? – the excitement level increased.
Leviathan Wakes, The Expanse by James S A Corey. I’ve read book 1 of The Expanse series, and I’ve watched 2 seasons on TV, and it was while watching the TV show that I realized that Earth Quarantined was a bit lie the Expanse if it was played out of Earth. And in Earth Quarantined I had to ask, what was the true cost of world peace?
Earth Arrested
Earth Quarantined Book Two
by D.L. Richardson
Published 19 February 2021
Genre: SciFi Dystopian Thriller
Page Count: 311
Add it to your Goodreads TBR!
A new threat is coming.
Earth Arrested follows the story of Kethryn Miller and Neah, twins who didn’t know of each other’s existence. One lived a celebrity lifestyle, the other lived in a hidden underground city. The existence of twins is forbidden under Truce Law, and Neah’s escape from the hidden city brought humanity’s crimes to the attention of the aliens who were keeping Earth under tight control.
In Earth Arrested, the race is on to achieve space travel before the fleet of ships sitting on the edge of our solar system arrives. This fleet contains the Criterion leader, and she is coming to do what the first alien colonists failed to do: destroy all humanity.
Humanity can’t surrender to this new alien occupation. But our fragile planet also can’t take another war. Then there is an important factor that both humans and aliens are forgetting: there is a third side arming themselves for this coming war, and they have already lost everything.
If you like dystopian thrillers that turn conventional ideas about space exploration on their head, stories with twists and turns, and thought-provoking reads, then you’ll enjoy D L Richardson’s Earth Quarantined series.
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“Are you awake?” Kethryn asked, nudging her mother and not believing that she was sleeping at all. “Are you hungry?”
Angela grunted; her eyes still closed. “You sound like one of the nurses.”
“You should be so lucky. I won’t be making your bed or bringing you food on a tray.”
Her mother shrugged but she didn’t open her eyes. The silence in the transport was disturbed by the gentle melody coming from the front. The driver was humming a tune.
At last, Angela sat up and rubbed at her eyes. The day had clearly exhausted her.
“I dislike holographic drivers,” she said. “And I dislike it more when they try to sing. Can we turn him off?”
“That depends. Are you going to talk to me? I brought him along for the company in case…”
Kethryn let the words trail off.
Her mother glanced down at her hands. “In case I returned to my shell. Things are different now, Kethryn. I can’t hide myself away anymore. I’ve known this time was coming. I could feel it in my bones. Even before your father came to warn me about it. Everything is changing. Everything eventually does.”
“You talk as if you can predict the future. I suppose you can. Your bags were packed as if you were expecting me.”
“Your father’s visit confirmed my suspicions. He told me about—” Her mother’s voice choked. Her hands twitched. Her lips formed words, but no sound came out. “About…” she said again, almost choking on the effort.
“It’s okay, you can say her name.” Kethryn reached out a hand, then quickly pulled away. Years of dealing with her mother’s aversion to physical contact made this hesitation an automatic response. Yet, when her mother responded by reaching for Kethryn’s hand, the flood of emotions gushed as fast as the river rapids her mother had tried to drown herself in.
Kethryn squeezed the hands entwined with hers. “You can talk about Neah. She is my sister, your daughter, and she exists.”
Her mother nodded. “Your father told me that Neah made it to the city. I didn’t know she was alive, Kethryn. I swear to you, if I’d known.”
Earth Quarantined
Earth Quarantined Book One
by D.L. Richardson
Published 15 November 2018
Genre: SciFi Dystopian Thriller
Page Count: 330
Add it to your Goodreads TBR!
World peace came with rules. We’ve just broken them.
Kethryn Miller is an award-winning actress, destined to rule State Seven of a unified Earth, but nothing will prepare her for the role she’ll take on when a strange woman who shouldn’t be alive turns up in the city, threatening to expose the lies that have kept peace on Earth for 200 years.
In the year 2055, millions of humans were wiped out by a deadly virus. Our desire and need to get off the planet and into space became our highest priority. However, before any ships could be launched, First Contact was made by an alien race called the Criterion. To prevent this deadly virus from getting into space, they placed Earth under quarantine. Then they herded us into cities so they could control our dying population and the planet’s resources. They saved us.
But they also rule over us. And we’ve let them because, for the past three hundred years, they have kept offering us the technology to get into space. Yet we’re still here on this dying planet.
The Criterion are lying to us.
What they don’t know is that we’re lying to them.
“If you like dystopian thrillers that turn conventional ideas about space exploration on their head, stories with twists and turns, and thought-provoking reads, then you’ll enjoy D L Richardson’s first book in the Earth Quarantined series” – BestThrillers.com
Amazon US | Amazon CA | Amazon UK
The thud of her boots and the hum of overhead pipes clogged her head. Too loud in her ears, rude for the sound to be there but it had no other place to go.
Neah gulped in a lungful of air and for a split second obliterated time and space. Visualize the power to do whatever you want. Intense.
When she held her breath she could master the quiet. But her twenty-four-year-old lungs needed air the way the underground bunker needed to thump and hum and give off the stench of burning oil. At last she exhaled, though it came out as a heavy sigh. Somewhere in the distance a machine groaned. Life inside this station was like that heavy sigh. Intense.
Pressing a hand against the concrete wall, she tried to detect motion. Legend said the old power station housed their souls, and Neah’s daughter, Becka – four years old at the time – had held her ear against the wall beside her bed, claiming to hear the beating heart of the station. If the station and its inhabitants existed as one, then if Neah detected the heart of the station, she could detect the same of Becka.
She pressed a fist against her chest.
“Always remember,” she whispered.
A bang came from her left. The metal door to the guardhouse command room swung open and a sentinel stepped out, yawning and stretching. Neah whipped her hand away from the wall and brushed past the guard muttering her usual greeting.
“Get out of my way, dipshit.”
It was six a.m., August 17 of the year 197 ATW (After The War), and Neah was about to clock on to start a normal day in an abnormal world. She’d rather have been anywhere else on Earth. The problem was finding anywhere livable.
Gazing up at the duty roster brought a snarl to her lips. The board contained the running tab on which sentinel would die first from a routine check of the station for a contamination breach. The tab beat the boredom out of having nothing to do other than pursue young kids who spat from the top of the gangways and old folks who forgot to wear pants. Someone had crossed out the hundred-to-one odds against Neah’s name and written TODAY.
“Freaking scumbag,” she said.
In two strides she stood at the board and scrubbed out the word TODAY, and upped the odds to two hundred. While it was considered it bad form to complain about the pranks the other guards pulled, she wasn’t in the mood for jokes today. Not today, not this week, not this month.
Evin, a tall guy with meaty arms who was her boss and also her roommate, walked into the room. He stood in the middle like a towering black stone.
Evin flicked his chin at the board. “Wasn’t like that when I signed on.”
“Probably that shithead, Gus.” Neah clenched her hands into fists. “Always messing about with the board. I ought to skin him alive.”
Augustine – Gus – was the seventeen-year-old son of the High Council Leader, Lucias. The smartest person in the station, also the weirdest, and definitely the biggest thorn in Neah’s side. She’d deal with Gus later.
“I’m finishing up,” said Evin. “Hitting the shower then crashing. You better have told Wes that if he plays his video games too loud, I’ll break his neck.”
If anyone else had threatened Neah’s kid brother she’d have lunged at them with her stun stick and burned them a new breathing hole. But Evin treated Wes like his own, sometimes too much like his own. Maybe if Neah didn’t neglect the kid so much the big guy wouldn’t have to look after him. But they did things like that down here.
Evin placed his radio on the bench. Unhooked his belt. Rolled his neck. Obviously not in a hurry to leave.
“Do you need to brief me on anything?” Neah asked him.
“Actually, yeah. Chelsea called. She hasn’t seen Jurden for twelve hours.”
D L Richardson writes speculative fiction, which encompasses science fiction, supernatural fiction, and fantasy. She lives in Australia with her husband and dob, and when she’s not writing, she can be found wandering in her yard waging war on weeds, watching back-to-back episodes on Netflix, playing her piano or guitar, curled up on the couch reading a book, or walking the dog.
She is the author of the ‘Welcome to the Apocalypse’ series and ‘The Shivers Novellas’. She also conducts writing workshop and appears at Australian pop culture conventions as few times a year.
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