UK Blog Tour: Tracer by Rob Boffard‏!

 

Guest Post with Rob Boffard!

'Why did you decide to write a book based in space? How did you come up with the idea for Tracer?'

We have a lot of misconceptions about space.

If you don’t believe me, try and explain what would happen to a human body that lands up in space without a spacesuit. No, you don’t die immediately. No, you don’t freeze solid. No, your entire body doesn’t explode. In fact, assuming you aren’t holding your breath when your spacesuit magically dematerialises around you, you could stay conscious for up to fifteen seconds -- and alive for up to two minutes - before you’re well and truly screwed.

Now try and think about how spaceships manoeuvre. Specifically, think about space battles between, let us say, a fleet of X-Wings and a squadron of Tie Fighters. All that swooping and swerving and dodging laser fire? See, that wouldn’t really be able to happen. Objects in zero gravity don’t move like that. Space battles would, in reality, be extremely slow.

I’m not saying all this stuff to be a party pooper, or to say I know more than anyone else (quite the opposite, in fact). To me, this makes space more exciting, not less. When I was a kid, I went through a long period of being completely obsessed with space. I was the dude in the playground telling everybody that objects didn’t actually orbit the Earth but just went into a kind of controlled fall that never hit the ground. On a related note, that was probably why I got beaten up a lot, but the point is that I loved knowing how space worked.

When I first started dicking around with writing a novel, there was never any doubt about where it was going to be set. Not for a second. I knew it was going to go down in space long before I wrote a single word. All I had to do was add wrinkles.

Like a really, really big space station. Like a population that’s been up there for a hundred years. Like a horrific threat which might just wipe them all out.

Because that’s the thing about space. Just because you know how it works doesn’t mean it’s any less terrifying.

 

IN SPACE

EVERY. SECOND. COUNTS.

Our planet is in ruins. Three hundred miles above its scarred surface orbits Outer Earth: a space station with a million souls on board. They are all that remain of the human race.

Darnell is the head of the station's biotech lab. He's also a man with dark secrets. And he has ambitions for Outer Earth that no one will see coming.

Prakesh is a scientist, and he has no idea what his boss Darnell is capable of. He'll have to move fast if he doesn't want to end up dead.

And then there's Riley. She's a tracer - a courier. For her, speed is everything. But with her latest cargo, she's taken on more than she bargained for.

A chilling conspiracy connects them all.

The countdown has begun for Outer Earth - and for mankind.

 

 

Check it out on Goodreads!

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Author bio:

Rob Boffard is a South African author who splits his time between London, Vancouver and Johannesburg. He has worked as a journalist for over a decade, and has written articles for publications in more than a dozen countries, including the Guardian and Wired in the UK. Tracer is his first novel.

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