I fell in love with these covers and Ken La Salle, along with the Miblart team of Ukraine have done an outstanding job creating a brand for the Breakthrough series, a science fiction series sure to capture your imagination. It did mine and I eagerly look forward to the next book in the series, The Deaths and Life of Arturo Delgado.

Ken La Salle left it up to me to title his guest post. What do you think? Did I do it justice?

BREAKTHROUGH BUCKET LIST IS A WORK IN PROGRESS

Do you have a bucket list?

I do.

Strange as it may seem, however, my bucket list has little to do with things I didn’t accomplish in the real world so much as it is about the stories I have not, yet, told and really want to. Every book takes a little more time from my life and I realized, sometime ago as I neared my mid-50s, that I should get to those stories I really want to tell before another month or another year or another decade passed.

You don’t put tiny excursions on your bucket list, though, so I decided to turn those tales into a series as grand as possible, one that would be “bucket list worthy.”

I began by writing a novel about Max Dedge, a guy who basically just wants to help. But he was put behind a gun, paid to kill people, instead. Years later, having put down his gun and taking his own path, he finds himself hired to solve some bombing only to end up with a wizard on his arm and the fate of a world in his hands.

This first novel in the series that I call “The Breakthrough” was Max Dedge in the Time of the Uniborg. Being an independent author spurred by inspiration, I slapped on a cover, released the novel, and moved on to the next book in the series.

That next book, which has just been released, is Sue Jorgensen: Queen of Space. Sue’s just a small-business owner, a single mom, who is thrust into an unscrupulous galaxy when her son is taken from her by aliens. While Max’s story focused on the fantastic, Sue tried to keep hers down to Earth… or, at least, in this solar system.

This is when I began to realize that The Breakthrough, filled with offbeat characters and otherworldly adventures, is a story about regular people saving what little of their lives they can from a cruel universe. If they’re lucky, they’ll save a bit more. And all of this happens as a terrible force is coming to destroy the solar system. They can see it coming. They know what’s going to happen. But is it too big for them? Can they possibly stop it?

But I couldn’t just slap a cover onto Sue. Sue, Max, and The Breakthrough demanded better. A story this big needed cover art just as expressive. I was fortunate to work with the Miblart team from Ukraine, who turned my covers from snapshots into murals that display the expansive story before you.

The third novel in this series, The Deaths and Life of Arturo Delgado, will be coming soon with more books to follow and I hope you join me for the rest of The Breakthrough, my personal bucket list.

Mr Wonderful kept me motivated and on the move for so many years, that now I am older I find myself content spending a lot of time at home, in our little piece of Paradise. I do have one thing on my bucket list that I have never done. I want to go down the Gulf side of Florida, from home, Pensacola, to the tip of the Florida Keys: air boating through the Everglades, swimming with the Manatees at Crystal River, visiting the mermaids at Wicki Wachee Springs State Park and seeing the green flash at the tip of the Forida Keys.

Do you have a bucket list?

Amazon / Goodreads

MY REVIEW

Ken La Salle has done an excellent job of creating a brand for The Breakthrough series with his covers. They are gorgeous and hint at the action and adventure inside…so, prepare yourself. Sue Jorgensen will definitely be a bumpy ride.

Sue Jorgensen’s worst day did not begin when the Golden Gage Bridge was destroyed….

“…you’re going to regret ever getting in this car if you don’t get out this second.”

And that is how the story begins. Sue and her son getting into her own ‘car’ and ending up on an alien ship. They take her son and Sue will not quit until she gets him back. When the car took off, I thought of Back To The Future and ET, with a little something extra

Ken La Salle has a twisted sense of humor that I love and it shines in Sue Jorgensen. Half the time I didn’t know whether to be pissed off or laugh out loud.

Sue Jorgensen does have sex with an alien. Do they do it different? Well, she does wonder if that explains the thing he does in bed.

Sue Jorgensen recruits help to rescue her son:

“A pirate can be a fighter, but also a lover, the kind of guy who rescues a maiden, steals her purse, and uses the money to save a puppy.”

We have Abrogines, who want to destroy our world and everyone in it, Stinkers, who are a people from…well, I think you can guess what their planet is made of, and more. The Collective is an amalgamation of the other species. They are nonviolent.

I love when Pod, a sentient machine, puts her on a spaceship full of virgins. They talk like the Fonz and the simplest flirtation has them swept off their feet. When Sue kissed Zanks cheek, she never could have predicted what would ‘pop up’ and I did laugh out loud. OMG! I won’t tell you because it is so good and so funny, you need to be as surprised as I was to get the full enjoyment of Sue’s situation. Ken describes Zanks as a walking Muppet.

Aliens know that we are a violent species and the ‘idiots of the galaxy. Earth is in danger and it won’t end in Sue Jorgensen, so be ready for Book III.

I voluntarily reviewed a free copy of Sue Jorgensen by Ken La Salle.

GOODREADS BLURB

Sue Jorgensen never imagined she’d find herself standing on the deck of an alien ship, escaping the chaos on the Earth below, ascending in a heavily modified Plymouth – when aliens take her son!

She started her morning as she always did as a restauranteur in the wilds of Washington, making the coffee and cleaning the countertops when a stranger happened by and sat at the counter. He showed her news clips of a shattered Golden Gate Bridge, destroyed by aliens and a man named Max Dedge, a private investigator who he claims has brought doom to the world. All at once, the reality she has known is replaced with space-faring Plymouths, gravity drives, and a mad dash into space.

Somewhere between space and terra firma, Sue Jorgensen finds herself in a new galaxy – one that is being taken apart for scrap by interstellar corporations with no interest in human life. Now, she will have to find a strength she never knew existed, to pick herself up when she’s thrown back to Earth and find her son in the vastness of space.

With the help of semi-sentient machines, mind-controlled dreamers, and an iron will, Sue Jorgensen will travel to the farthest reaches of sanity drawn by the power of her love for her son – to find the Queen of Space within herself, to discover that nothing is what it seems.

And that we all need rescuing.

Book One of The BreakThrough took readers to a whole new world. Sue Jorgensen returns them to Earth, and nothing will be the same.

• Genre: Action and Adventure, Aliens, Fiction, Science Fiction
• 278 pages, Kindle Edition
• Published May 23, 2023Series
• The BreakThrough (#2)

ABOUT KEN LA SALLE

Born on an 18th century mining ship, Ken La Salle is not his name. He just likes it. He writes about whatever he damn well pleases, hoping to build more of a cult following than a readership just for a cut on the robes. Looking for the mainstream but sticking to the shore, you can find out more about Ken La Salle at the imaginatively named www.kenlasalle.com.

MY KEN LA SALLE REVIEWS

• False Starts
• Cookies: Sluts of the Snack World
• Heaven Enough
• Heaven Denied
• Heaven For Now
• Wormfood Island
• Work of Art
• Work of Art II
• Climbing Maya
• Max Dedge in the Time of the Uniborg
• Little Mike

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