It’s the perfect score—stealing valuable data from a VIP in cryo-freeze midway through a decades-long interstellar crossing. If it works, Kara will have enough money to buy what she’s always wanted—a Captaincy.
Welcome to one of the April 6th stops on the blog tour for Cold Sleep by Luke Hindmarsh with Goddess Fish Promotions. Be sure to follow the rest of the tour for spotlights, reviews, and a giveaway! More on that at the end of this post.
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About the Book
Cold Sleep
by Luke Hindmarsh
Published 4 April 2023
Crossroad Press
Genre: Science Fiction
Page Count: 317
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It’s the perfect score—stealing valuable data from a VIP in cryo-freeze midway through a decades-long interstellar crossing. If it works, Kara will have enough money to buy what she’s always wanted—a Captaincy.
But with the rest of the crew and the cargo of one hundred thousand colonists still frozen, Kara and her accomplice, Zed, realize they’re not the only ones awake. The murdered woman they find is only the first victim of whoever or whatever has woken from Cold Sleep.
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Excerpt
Blood streaks the VIP casket’s pristine white ceramic shell. Crimson handprints mark the controls and edges of the casket’s lid. Bright red spray mars the shining surface of the nearest casket and trickles down across its viewport. The deckplate’s smeared here and there, but the marks aren’t clear enough to make out any footprints.
“No one else in here,” Zed says.
While I’ve been gawping at the corpse, he’s secured the room.
There’s more to him than being a reliable bit of rough. It’s become too easy to dismiss him—the man is capable enough.
“I don’t understand. How could one of the passengers get out of storage?” I ask.
“Look at the casket,” Zed says. “Why’s it still registering an occupant?”
Being careful not to step in any blood, I get closer to her. What strikes me is the way the arcs of blood paint the VIP bay looks like something out of an anti-Ares Cult propaganda piece. The sacrifice of innocent beauty to sate the spirit of Mars. Kind of thing we’d only caught rumors of my first time shipping out. Then the newsfeeds had become more and more clogged with hysteria with every return to Earth. That and the usual.
War. War threatening everywhere.
Makes me think of my brother and hope he isn’t—wait, decades have passed—wasn’t on the frontline.
I drag my mind back from the futureshock and my eyes from the corpse. Getting lost in the past is a sure-fire way to get killed in the here and now.
About the Author
A Brit now living in the Scandinavian wilds of Denmark with his wife and half-Viking kids, Luke worked as a Criminal Barrister in and around London for over a decade dealing with everything from minor theft cases to a real life axe murder and everything in between. Thanks to parents in the military he grew up being dragged around the world–while living in the Far East he picked up a love for the martial arts which continues to this day, as he passes on what he’s learned to a select dojo of students. Cold Sleep is his third novel. His first was Amazon cyberpunk bestseller Mercury’s Son, his second a UK set supernatural suspense novel 3:33 AM.
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Giveaway Alert!
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Thanks for hosting!
Hi and thanks for hosting my novel!
If anyone has any questions about “Cold Sleep” or my previous novels (critically praised psychological horror “3:33 AM”, and bestselling cyberpunk murder mystery “Mercury’s Son”), please ask away. I write, I don’t bite… at least now I’ve been sufficiently caffeinated for the day!
Good evening, I was curious about the type and amount of research that you had to do to write this story and also if you believe that cryo-sleep will one day be a reality for space travel?
Hi Bea,
My research was a tad extreme—I started a Physics degree with the Open University. I’d actually written the first draft at that point but wanted to ensure as much scientific accuracy as I could when I did the rewrites. The next trick was obviously trying not to bore readers with technical detail, making the research a foundation for the story rather than a feature, if that makes sense.
Cryonics required quite some time in the OU’s online library reading up on what papers I could about ischemic damage (so-called freezer burn) and the like. I think it will be as possible as spaceships that can travel at high percentages of the speed of light. Meaning it’s far in our future. It strikes me as a technology that will inevitably be unreliable and that’s what I’ve made it in Cold Sleep. Of the 100,000 colonists, a percentage would not survive the journey because of the risks of being frozen. Others might suffer permanent physical or mental side effects. I’ve also tried to make the point that going into cold sleep is dying, being frozen, and then being resuscitated. Hence the opening line references reported near death experiences: “I’m woken from dreams of angels.”