And the winners are...

All during May, I ran a contest where my readers could win one of four autographed copies of The Gunfighter and The Gear-Head, and now we know who the winners are!

When I first brought the idea to my publisher, they didn't see the point. All the readers who would be entering the contest would have already purchased the book, so what was my angle? To be honest, I didn't really have a nefarious money-making motive for doing it. It sounded like a fun thing to do, and it was. So I just did it on my own out of my own pocket. I'm still not super sure what the total cost is going to end up being. I get copies of my books for the gross price since I already gave away all my freebies to friends and family, so that wasn't too expensive. What I hadn't counted on was the international readership I apparently have. It turns out, half the winners are not from the U.S.--there's a Canadian and an Australian in the mix and so I'm going to get to see what it costs to ship books internationally. To be honest, I'm more curious than anything else.

As for a reiteration of the rules and all that. There were two winners for the trivia part of the contest and two winners for the fan-art part of the contest. The trivia winners were picked simply by which two people got the highest scores, no partial credit. I was a little worried about this part when I gave both sets of trivia questions to my girlfriend before I launched the contest and she didn't do so well. Of course, this fear was immediately allayed when the first trivia entry came in the day the contest opened, and she got 100%, incidentally one of the winners. The fan-art part wasn't judged by me. I took the names off the submissions, not that my girlfriend would know who they were anyway, and let her pick her two favorites.

Now, I will post the answers to the trivia questions since they don't have any real spoilers to them anyway (If you want to try your hand at the contest, follow the link to the contest above and then check your answers to see how you would have done):

Congratulations to:

Courtney for getting a 100% on the day the contest opened

and

Mike who only missed one

Raven Ladies Trivia:

 What color is Slark blood? -- Green

 Where was Fiona Bishop born? -- Tombstone, Arizona (Remember, it's BORN, not where did she live most of her life, which would have been Los Angeles)

 What is Veronica’s real first name? -- Tanner

 What did Fiona name her horse? -- Tyra (There's a not-too-subtle joke running through the book about why)

 How many Slark heads need to be collected for a week’s worth of fuel? -- Six

 How many dirigibles did the Ravens build to attack the refineries? -- 3

 What does Fiona call her crazy moments? -- Chaos tics

 Who promises to kill Yahweh Hawkins in Fiona’s name? -- Claudia (who is the protagonist in the second book in the series The Steam-Powered Sniper in the City of Broken Bridges)

 What catalogue did Fiona model for before the Slark invasion? -- Victoria's Secret

 Why did Gieo program Ramen to lie sometimes? -- To see if she could

The other set of questions, which very few people even took a crack at, was spread across almost all my other books:

General Cassandra Duffy Literature Trivia:

Demons of Paradise:

 In “An Archeologist’s Dream” name one thing Nitocris asked Holly to bring her. -- perfume/pomegranate/panties (also gave it to someone who answered Ford Mustang, because technically that was true too)

 In “An Eternal Night of Overtime” what did Brooke want to be before she turned to the fashion industry? -- Professional surfer

 In “Answered Prayers” what scent follows Jada’s guardian angel? -- Peppermint

Astral Liaisons:

 In “The Flesh Menagerie” what do the Ice-Niners want Sonali and Claire to do? -- Procreate

 In “Of Pirates and Politicians” what letter do the Saladins resemble? -- F

 In “Escaping the Colony of Hot and Cold” the colonists of Martini are divided into two classifications, olives and…? -- Onions

The Vampires of Vigil’s Sorrow:

 Which college does Debbie want to go to? -- Barnard

 Grace’s father, Henry, served in World War II in which branch of the military? -- Navy

The Grift Girls Series:

 In “The Last Best Tip” what business do Lucy and Sasha want to start with their grifted money? -- Lesbian sports bar

 In “An Undead Grift for Christmas” Lucy, Sasha, and Lara are attacked by a gang of…? -- Department store Santa Clauses

Now for the fan-art part of the contest:

Congratulations to Felicia!

The picture can also be found on her website along with her other work.

And Bunny!

I have a theory that my girlfriend picked this picture because it very closely resembles how she sees Ramen

The whole contest thing was supposed to coincide with the release of the second book in the series, but it ended up coming out a few days early on some platforms and the contest was in my procrastinating hands, so the announcing of the winners and the release of "The Steam-Powered Sniper in the City of Broken Bridges" kinda missed each other by a little more than a week--partially my bad, partially my publisher's.

For shits and giggles, here is the cover of the 2nd book in the series (The Steam-Powered Sniper...), available now, and the third book in the series, which should be out in December (The Gunfighter's Gambit): 

The Gunfigher and The Gear-Head Chapter 1

My favorite cover to date!

I'm going to do something kind of unprecedented here, and I'm going to skip the preachy blog about sex advice, relationship tips, and feminist rhetoric. I know what you're thinking, and no, I don't have that crazy bird flu from the Contagion movie; I'm just feeling less opinionated and more giving right now.

I will say this briefly though--the reaction to this book thus far has been amazing! And, if you really need sex positive talk, relationship advice, and feminist brouhaha, this book has all of it in fiction form, which makes it much more fun to read. Enjoy!

Chapter 1: Short flights cut shorter.

“Coming up on the teeth of the line now,” Ramen’s voice buzzed through the static-riddled intercom.

The dirigible thrummed and breathed like a living thing through the hot air being pumped constantly from the boiler into the zeppelin cylinder and beating with the thumping of turbines of the engines providing the forward thrust; both created an unimaginable din, preventing direct communication without the intercom between her and the automaton running the major systems. Along the underside, between the ribs of the armor plates, ran a walkway the entire length of the airship from the boiler in the back to the primary weapon in the front. Gieo scampered down the narrow walkway, using the handrails to keep upright as the airship swayed and jolted in its flight path.

Tamping her leather top hat down on the four, purple braids at the four corners of her head, she lowered her green-tinted goggles over her eyes. The hat didn’t fit right, leaving her with three options as she saw it:  find a new hat, fix a chinstrap, or wear her hair in the four thick braids. It was an easy decision as far as she was concerned. Sliding down the ladder into the ball-turret on the nose of the great, sturgeon-shaped airship, her riding boots hissed against the copper piping.

“Go serpentine, Ramen,” she shouted into the intercom cup next to the base of the ladder.

“Aye, aye, ma’am,” the automaton’s voice crackled back.

The immense gears of the airship’s bat-like wings engaged with a squeaking, rumbling cacophony. Gieo strapped herself into the reclined seat of the ball-turret, affixing the leather belts across her chest, clipped into the metal tongs on the lapels of her tailed tuxedo jacket, holding tight against the brown, leather corset she wore beneath. As the chair lowered down into the Plexiglas turret, she hooked the rubber hose from the air-hydraulic feed into the leather and chain choker she wore, pumping fresh air up around her head to cool her and aid in breathing.

With the wings flapping in machinated patterns, the great airship took on a wide swing to its flight, shooting back and forth in as athletic of zigzags as a fifty-meter long blimp could manage. Gieo spun the handles on the weapon system’s hydraulic feeds, sending steam power into the four guns positioned in a box around her. The desert floor, thousands of feet below, rolled back and forth beneath her, held at bay only by the glass ball she sat in.

“Leveling the outcropping at the precise center of our undulations,” Ramen’s voice crackled through the com speaker in the ball-turret.

“Have the smoke-screen loaded and ready.”

“Aye, aye, ma’am.”

“Disengaging now.” Gieo pulled the pins on the ball-turret’s gyroscope arm. The entire turret, with her inside, dropped down off the bottom of the armored airship, dangling by a ten meter, articulated metal arm and a dozen hydraulic tubes and hoses. She slipped her feet into the leather straps of the turret and took control of the swaying arm. All around her the hisses of steam and clanking of gears let her know the gyroscopes were functioning as intended.

Puffs of white smoke from the ground erupted out of an underbrush canopy nestled between the furthest most rocks of the outcropping. Shells whistled up toward the zeppelin, followed by explosions, and the clanking of flack bouncing off the airship’s armor.

Gieo leveled the gyroscopes to steady her gun platform even as the airship swayed in evasive maneuvers. She brought the targeting reticule of a large, copper hoop with four smaller hoops arranged in the center to indicate the four guns, on the outcropping, and pushed the two trigger handles forward.

“I see your teeth,” she growled, “now take a look at mine!”

The four guns around her erupted in steam-powered blasts, sending shells of explosive material down onto the antiaircraft battery four at a time. The shells exploded across the rocky surface in showers of white, magnesium fire. She saw a few of the scattering Slark trying to escape the kill zone, and she zeroed in on them to put the fire right across their path. She got some, more than some, several even, before a direct hit caught her dirigible on the port side, knocking free one of the wings with a shriek of metal and a resounding thump.

“Son-of-a…” Gieo kicked free the emergency hold on the main spring of the arm’s gyroscope, pulling the entire swinging arm of the ball-turret back into the body of the blimp. The swaying of the ship was replaced by a long, descending spiral, as the wounded blimp fluttered toward the ground with a torn cylinder and only one functional wing. Gieo unhooked herself from the ball-turret and scrambled back up the ladder into the main body of the ship. “Launch the smoke-screen,” she shouted into the intercom.

“On the way,” Ramen replied.

Four quick pops were followed by four loud explosions as the outer plates on the boilers blew off and the water content dumped onto the stoking fires. White steam and smoke poured from the dirigible, obscuring even the vaguest outline of the ship as it began its slow, spiraling descent toward the ground. Gieo scrambled back down the walkway to the radio room, cranked the hand-wheel to extend the antenna, and tapped out the distress code for a languishing aircraft.

“This is Dirigible Purple Six, going down,” Gieo shouted into the mouthpiece. “Do you copy, air-defense network?”

After a few minutes of trying and retrying the distress call, an old, familiar voice crackled back over the shortwave. “This is air-defense Tempe-2,” the dithering old man said. “There hasn’t been anything flying in years. My radio was buried under laundry.”

“There has too,” Gieo protested. “We went through this not six months ago.”

A long stretch of radio silence followed.

“Are you sure it wasn’t years ago?” Tempe-2 asked.

“Positive!” Gieo shrieked.

“Oh, well, I guess if you’re positive,” the old man said. “What’s your situation and location?”

“Situation is stable, but crashing,” Gieo said, “and location is sector 7-G.”

“That’s the Tombstone Three-Three-O,” Tempe-2 said. “I’ll see if I can get someone over there on the horn for a retrieval team, but don’t expect much luxury. Those Tombstoners are hardscrabble from tip to toe.”

“Whatever, it beats walking home,” Gieo said. “Dirigible Purple 6, over and out.”

This was her sixth crash in the last three years and the story was always the same. Tempe-2 was the only air defense network radioman left in the world as far as she knew, and he was half-gone most of the time. She suspected he was a methanol drinker, peyote user, or ether huffer. Every time she got shot down, it was like the first time for him. She was glad for his existence, as he always managed to get someone out from one of the free cities to pick her up, but he never remembered having done it.

“We’re at 750 feet,” Ramen’s voice came through the com.

“Get back to the shop,” Gieo replied. “Hopefully I’ll see you in a couple days.”

She heard her automaton’s escape tube fire and the telltale thumping of his helicopter blades as he flitted away, too small and well below the notice of the antiaircraft batteries. She climbed up the ladder into the spider room. The spherical room, dead center in the zeppelin cylinder, composed of a network of rubber tubing with a harness in the middle. She shimmied into the harness, hooked herself in, including the neck brace, and waited for the ship to hit the desert floor.

Crashing was becoming routine. She was more curious about who she was going to meet from Tombstone than she was afraid of the impending impact. She’d never met anyone from the Tombstone hunting camp, although their reputation for being hardcore, psycho Slark-killers was well-traveled.

Her thoughts were interrupted by four concussive explosions slamming into the underside of the airship—shoulder-fired rockets. One must have snuck through a chink in the ship’s defenses as the dirigible’s descent took a violent shove from soft flutter into chaotic tumble.

“Oh, you guys are dickheads,” Gieo growled. She reached into her pocket, thrust the mouth guard over her teeth, and braced herself for impact. The ship hit with an explosive crash as the blimp portion ruptured. The boiler launched itself away from the wreckage, and the pilot whipped around inside the spider room like whirling dervish.

If you've reached the end of this and you're all, "Hey, wtf happens to her?" The rest of the book can be purchased on Nook, Kindle, and Smashwords (for you Kobo and iPad users).