Win, Lose, Draw

Science Fiction & Fantasy

synopsis

Synopsis

Cybers Wild Card #2: A Galactic Secret Agent Adventure

KurtisP385XL47Ruth: Game Changer. Prodigal daughter. Spy.

The Resistance coil is heating up on the primitive forest-world Andura, where human rebels fight the Cyber entities that control the peaceful but static galaxy according to strict WorldPlans. The Cybers send Agent Kurtis to investigate, unaware that she’s now a double agent for the Resistance. Still grieving and nursing betrayals from a Homeworld visit to her estranged family, Ruth arrives on Andura to find a gang of hoodlums destroying the ancient forests in order to sell rare resources.

Escaping both the Cybers and the corrupt rebels, Ruth joins the reclusive natives in the towering branches of the sacred Mother Tree, hoping to enlist their help in exposing a plot that threatens their world and all humans. The Cybers will have to face more than a band of Changers.

The Cybers can go suck circuits — when the Wild Card is in play, all bets are off.

“Will I pick up Sara Stamey’s second novel? Better believe it!” – Ed Bryant, Twilight Zone

“Count on it to fly you through to the end.” -Fantasy Review

“The thing that stands out about Sara Stamey’s prose, for me, is how taut it is, while managing to convey an image-rich atmosphere while keeping the pace headlong.” – Sherwood Smith, author of the Sartorias-deles novel series

Read the complete Cybers Wild Card series, originally published by Ace/Berkley and now updated:

#1: Wild Card Run #2: Win, Lose, Draw #3: Double Blind

bio

Author Biography

Award-winning novelist Sara Stamey’s journeys include treasure hunting and teaching scuba in the Caribbean, backpacking worldwide, operating a nuclear reactor, and owning a farm in Southern Chile. She taught creative writing at Western Washington University and shares her Salish Seaside home with wild creatures and her cat, dog, and paleontologist husband Thor Hansen. Sara’s science fiction novels with Berkley/Ace received praise from Publishers Weekly and made the Locus Best New Novelists list. Her Caribbean psychic suspense novel ISLANDS—“A stomping, vivid ride” (Statesman Review)—won the Chanticleer Paranormal Suspense Award and Hollywood Book Festival Genre Award. Her near-future Greek islands thriller THE ARIADNE CONNECTION won the Chanticleer Global Thriller Grand Prize and the Cygnus Award for speculative fiction. “A rocket-paced thrill ride that delivers complex, engaging characters in a laser-sharp plot.” (Chanticleer Reviews) Her novel PAUSE won First Place in the Somerset Awards for women's fiction and is a Pulpwood Queens International Book Club selection. "Stamey's lovely, inspiring, often funny novel... will touch the hearts of readers." (Publishers Weekly Booklife)

website

Author Insight

ContraPlan Disruption on a Forest World

In WIN, LOSE, DRAW, the second in my Cybers Wild Card science fiction series, offworlders and rogue AI entities threaten the serene stability of a forest world. Enter Ruth Kurtis, double agent for the ruling Cybers and secretly working for the Resistance that seeks to break free from AI control. The shy tree-dwelling natives are caught in the cross-hairs (and cross-cut saws violating their sacred trees).... Long before the film "Avatar," I wrote this novel about greedy offworlders starting to ravage the natural order and cutting down a sacred Mother Tree. The setting was inspired by the old-growth forests of my own native Pacific Northwest.

Book Excerpt

Win, Lose, Draw

Prologue

DARK, ROUGH-BARKED TRUNKS climbed straight to an impossibly high mesh of branches against flat gray clouds. Massive roots echoed the interwoven web of sky and limb, spreading deep beneath the wet earth. Every mound of dirt, every fallen twig, every rock glistened with moisture, cloaked in moss and lichen and fern. The thick, swimming air damped even sound to a muffled hush. Green dimness engulfed endless columns of the giant trees.

They counted their lives in tens of centuries, breathed to a rhythm that reduced human generations to brief flickers. Yet even the oldest had germinated and thrust skyward within a timeless, endless cycle of forest. Even the memory of change slumbered at the heart of the world. There was only the forest, the slow repeating of seasons. It was the Way.

Then through the silence came a breath of wind, stirring leaf and needle, shaking drops to shiver and splash. It carried a ghost of sound—a cry, then a ground-shaking thud. A russet-furred creature darted up one massive trunk, peering with startled amber eyes.

Quick russet scurried away into shadow, and a deep hush swallowed the wind’s voice. Forest muffled the distant cry. It was not in the Plan.