Toni V. Sweeney

Imagine my surprise when, last week, I discovered two of my series had new novels released. Yes, that’s right. Two…count ‘em…two! One was another episode from my sci-fi romance; the other was a sword-and-sorcery.

These two men are different in so many ways, yet remarkably similar in character and attitude. Both can be single-minded in their determination to get what they want, and…no matter what they were before they married, they are now madly in love with their wives.

Riven is the son of a sellsword, a mercenary who died in the service of the Margrave of Arcanis. For his loyalty, the king raised his son as his own, so young Riven has grown up thinking he’s a VIP. Others are quick to remind him he’s just a barbarian who got very lucky, so he’s spent most of his young adult life trying to disprove that. Ever an opportunist, he becomes secretly engaged to the Princess Royal (he’s a handsome, persuasive brute, this boy) in order to really become part of the Royal Family, but he makes a fatal mistake. He doesn’t believe in the gods of Arcanis, and brags about it, and they, in turn, decide to punish him. In A Singing in the Blood (the third in the series), Riven has arrived at middle age; he’s trying to run his estate and raise his children, and be a loyal subject to the margrave when suddenly everything goes wrong. A new king comes to power, a man who hates anyone who isn’t native-born and Riven has to make a choice: either he has to swear to follow this madman in ridding the country of anyone who’s an alien or lose everything and everyone he holds dear. It’s a difficult decision to make for a man who finally has what he’s always wanted, but he does it and his choice affects his descendants forever.

Sinbad, on the other hand, is a criminal to begin with, a smuggler, a Felido-Terran hybrid who hates the United Terran Federation and its members as much as he loves his own planet. and it’s the Felidan part that gets him into trouble. In Sinbad’s Pride, third in its series, Sin is now a family man who loves his kids and his wife, but he just can’t stay a law-abiding citizen. Finding a loophole in the Treaty Felida signed with Terra after their ill-fated war, he intends to turn the entire planet into a smuggling operation which will once more return Felida to its pre-war glory. What he doesn’t realize is that the other clan leaders he enlists will want an affiliation with his own clan through marriage and will offer up their nubile daughters to be his concubines and what is wife Andi going to say about that? In the meantime, their sons are growing up and becoming men in every sense of the word, and discovering passions which will lead one into happiness and the other into tragedy.

Both Riven and Sin are men who’ve risen above their beginnings to become something more…in their dealings with others and their own families, they attempt to be good husbands, good fathers, good subjects, and good leaders. They are forced to make seemingly cruel decisions in order to provide the best for all; they hate to do it but they do it anyway—for love of king and country, of home and family.

Whether you like your romance set in the distant past or in the far future, I believe either of these stories will have something to offer. I hope you enjoy them.

Sinbad’s Pride is currently available as an e-book and will also soon be out in print!