"Captured" is captivating.

Captured
by Julia Barrett

Hello everyone! To get 2010 off to a sizzling hot start I am proud to announce Julia Barret’s new release from Siren Press- “Captured.”

The blurb speaks for itself.

“Mari never expects to find herself caged in a cargo hold on a spaceship. She learns from her captors she's headed to the meat market. When they try to return her to stasis, she resists. The male in charge, Ekkatt, allows her to remain awake. Mari realizes her survival depends upon connecting with Ekkatt. She must make him see her as a sentient being or she will end up dinner.

Ekkatt has never spoken to any human. Humans are beasts. They are valued for one thing, the money they bring at auction. The Attun are vegetarians, but other species prize human flesh and Ekkatt makes good money trapping. Then the female with red hair awakens. She speaks to him and forces him to admit she has a name. Mari throws Ekkatt's entire life into question, the biggest question... Can he watch her sold to the highest bidder?”

KL: What makes your hero so sexy?

JB: First of all, pardon my French, but Ekkatt is just fucking sexy! He's other, a man from another world. He's big, he's strong, he's courageous, and he's honorable yet conflicted. All his life he's been taught to think of humans as insentient beings, been told they have no souls. On his world, harboring a human or participating in any relationship with a human is punishable by death, yet he risks everything to save one human woman who has forced him to see her as his equal. He finds himself willing to do whatever he has to do to keep her alive

KL: What's is Mari’s biggest challenge to trusting him?

JB: Simple. Ekkatt is her kidnapper. He's stolen Mari from Earth, along with a cargo hold full of other women, in order to drop her at a warehouse on his planet where she will be auctioned off at the meat market. This is how he earns his living. He's a tracker and a trapper. Mari doesn't trust Ekkatt, but she believes her only chance of survival is to somehow get under his skin, to communicate with him and make him see her as a conscious being instead of an animal. She forces him to acknowledge that she has a name and she is not livestock to be sold to the highest bidder.

KL: Tell me your favorite thing about this story.

JB: For me, the most beautiful and the sexiest thing about the story is the trust and the respect that grows between two people from quite literally different worlds. They are both filled with guilt. Ekkatt because of the life he's led prior to meeting Mari and because of the fact that he took her in the first place. Mari because she has attached herself to her captor in order to stay alive. The hero suffers great remorse and the heroine suffers from survivor guilt. Both manage to come to terms with what they've done and what they haven't done and they fall in love

KL: I know you love Sci-fi and this is your first book in this genre. Who are your greatest influences in the Sci-fi genre?

JB: My current favorite science fiction writer is George R.R. Martin and his series, A Game of Thrones - it's very intense, loaded with complex characters and multiple storylines. So many authors have influenced me - Robert Heinlen with his classic, Stranger in a Strange Land, Larry Niven, the author of Ring World. Frank Herbert and Dune. Ursula LeGuin and The Left Hand of Darkness. I love Tad Williams, author of The Dragonbone Chair series and I adore Anne McCaffrey and her Pern books. I'm a huge Battlestar Galactica and Firefly/Serenity fan. Plus I love the original StarTrek and I'm a big fan of the Borg! I'm not a huge fan of sci fi on film because my standards are high, but The Terminator nailed time travel and I thought Avatar was pretty amazing - both films were written and directed by James Cameron.

KL: Tell me a bit about the dream that inspired “Captured.”

JB: Ah...the dream that wrote the book. Well, here's the true story that precedes the dream. When I was seventeen, I lived in Israel for a year. I worked in the l'ul, the chicken farm, on a kibbutz. On Shabbat, on Saturdays, only two of us worked and we took turns. On my Saturday, I overslept. Instead of getting up at 4:30 a.m., I woke up at 7, and I freaked out because the guy I was scheduled to work with was eighty-four years old! I threw on my clothes, rushed over to the chicken coops and began collecting eggs at the opposite end of the l'ul. That was the last thing I remember until the moment I found myself standing outside the twelfth house, with Noodleman, the older man, asking me how in the hell I collected twelve houses in an hour. I had no idea. I looked around and I had collected all the eggs, stacked them neatly in the cart, and I had absolutely no memory of what had happened in that hour. I didn't even remember spacing out or daydreaming. Nothing. I drew a complete blank. My memory of that day is still vivid and so is that one hour hole in my memory. Around the kibbutz, this became known as the Miracle of the Eggs. Normally, it would take at least six hours to collect that many eggs.

Last August, I dreamed the story of Mari and Ekkatt from start to finish - it was apparently my subconscious' version of what happened to me during that lost hour. Mari is kidnapped while she is collecting eggs from her sister's chicken coop. I could not get their story out of my head, so I stopped the book I was working on and wrote nonstop. Three weeks later, with minimal editing, I sent it off to Siren and as they say, the rest is history!

KL: I wish my workday went that easily. “Captured” is one hot, exciting story and Seven Sexy Scribes is going to post an excerpt of “Captured” on Friday. Trust me, you don’t want to miss it!

XXOO Kat