A Dream Within A Dream: The Transhuman Project Blog Tour: Excerpt + Giveaway

The Transhuman Project
Author: Erin Rhew
Genre: YA Science Fiction
Publication Date: January 15, 2019

Description:

When a video of Molly Richards is taken out of context and goes viral, she’s thrust into the upper echelons of social media stardom and becomes an overnight success in a country where Life Channel ratings reign supreme. As Kadar’s fastest rising celebrity, her life becomes a media circus, a show put on for the shallow national audience salivating for the next new thing.

But in a world where image is king, danger and death hide among the shadows. In the nearby country of Pacifica, the brutal Caezar turns his citizens into robotic weapons who infiltrate Kadar as sleeper transhumans. They walk among the populace, unaware they are pawns in the madman’s personal arsenal.

Only Molly, her friends, and an elite group of Kadarian fighters known as the Cyber Knights fully understand the transhuman threat, and only they can break the Caezar’s terrorist grip on both Pacifica and Kadar. Battling Fire Bots and humanoid agents, they seek to put a stop to the Caezar’s tyranny by unraveling the secrets buried between layers of deception.And they have to do it all while smiling and waving for the cameras.

As Molly and her friends peer behind the glitz and glamour, they discover something more frightening and more sinister than anything they’ve encountered yet…the truth.

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Mac slipped into Molly’s room behind Tash and Ryder. The three squeezed together like sardines in the tiny left corner of the entryway, a camera blind spot according to Tash. Since she’d hacked into nearly every computer system in both Pacifica and Kadar, he trusted her judgment.

He nuzzled up to her, trying to ride the fine line between normal hiding place closeness and creeper behavior. The sharp angles of her shoulder blades pressed into his chest, yet he relished the feel of her body against his. One wrong move and the hard spikes in her hair could poke his eye out, but he leaned in and inhaled the fragrance of her shampoo, taking the risk. Since they’d come to Kadar, Tash had switched from washing her hair with the orange soap his mother made for members of the Station to some ritzy, flowery aroma the Kadarians had concocted. He missed the orange smell, and his mother who’d lovingly made it by hand.

The Kadarians had tried to change Tash—dressed her up in fancy clothes, replaced the orange in her hair with flowers, and heightened her distrustful nature from moderate to teetering-on-a-cliff—but the core essence of his Tash had not waned. If anything, her badassery had ratcheted up a notch in his estimation. Like now, she’d turned the Kadarian’s own surveillance against them so The Pentad could have a secret meeting. He inhaled again. Ah, Tash, his code-hacking, butt-kicking goddess.

She whipped her head around and narrowed her dark eyes at him. A warning to back off. But he smiled like he had no idea what she’d be upset about. She returned his smile and turned in a tiny circle until they were face-to-face. His heart beat like an intoxicated drummer monkey. He leaned in, hoping against all hope that she’d kiss him, finally, after years of flitting around the edges.

But just as he closed his eyes and prepared for the biggest moment of his life, her knee crashed into his crotch. Pain cascaded through his groin and a small “oof” escaped his lips as the air rushed out of his lungs. He tried to breathe, but a big Out of Order sign seemed to be hanging across his chest. He grabbed the assaulted area and started to double over. But given their cramped quarters, his cheek landed on Tash’s bony shoulder, and she shoved him off, into Ryder’s arms. Ryder kept him steady while the waves of nausea rolled around in his stomach. His legs gave out beneath him, but Ryder held him up. Anything to keep their presence hidden.

Mac tried to think of something, anything, to get his mind off the horrid pulsing in his family jewels. She’d smiled to throw him off. She’d turned around as a ploy. A ruse. Despite the excruciating agony radiating through his man business, he grinned. That girl. She’d flashed him her pearly whites and then socked him in the Johnson, knowing all the while he’d have to stay absolutely silent. That minx. He’d give her points for creativity, that’s for sure.

Erin Rhew is an editor, the operations manager for a small press, and a YA fantasy and sci-fi author. Since she picked up Morris the Moose Goes to School at age four, she has been infatuated with the written word. She went on to work as a grammar and writing tutor in college and is still teased by her family and friends for being a member of the "Grammar Police."

A Southern girl by blood and birth, Erin spent years in a rainy pocket of the Pacific Northwest before returning to her roots in the land of hushpuppies, sweet tea, and pig pickin’. She’s married to fellow author, the amazingly talented (and totally handsome) Deek Rhew, and spends her time writing side-by-side with him under the watchful eye of their patient-as-a-saint writing assistant, a tabby cat named Trinity. Erin and Deek enjoy taking long walks, drinking coffee, lifting, boxing, eating pizza, staying up late into the night talking, and adventuring together.