UPDATE: The winner is…Diane Sallans!
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Psst! This blog is doing double-duty—also appearing over on the Delilah’s Collections website! Comment in both places for a chance to win! There are two prizes! And while you’re there, be sure to check out the posts and prizes from previous days!

May is nearly here, and it’s the final stretch of the school year. Even as merely a substitute teacher, I’m feeling very much the “What’s my Name? Who am I?” brain fatigue. And it’s also lacrosse season, which takes up the rest of the waking hours for my family. All of which is really too boring to blog about (and I’m honestly not sure I could cobble a cohesive blog together on any of those topics)… but the upcoming release of the Silver Soldiers: A Boys Behaving Badly Anthology *is* something to talk about!

I’m thrilled to be part of this anthology! I’ve had a short story included in the past two anthologies, and it’s a treat to be in the company of such creative, masterful writers, and to see the variety of ideas that stem from a simple phrase such as “Silver Soldier” or “First Responder.”

I recently celebrated publishing my seventh book in seven years (not including an array of short stories in various anthologies, or the three children’s books I’ve written and illustrated). It’s easy enough to look at the company I keep with the other authors in this anthology and get depressed at my own slow progress… comparison can do that to a person. But this is one of the reasons I love the Romance community: we cheer each other on and remind each other that every step forward is cause for celebration.

So, I continue my writing progress, however slow-and-steady it may be. Because I love to write. And I love to tell the stories bouncing around in my brain, which lean toward futuristic, fantastical, or in a galaxy far, far away. I’m born and bred in a small city in Indiana. We have corn and basketball and the Indy 500. None of which light my fire. But when Star Wars came to the big screen, I was seven… and it rocked my world. My impressionable years were filled with strange creatures, droids with personalities, spaceships, lightsabers, and (of course) the wonderful sexual tension between Han Solo and Princess Leia. My love of aliens and the extraordinary—and falling in love—was solidified.

The upcoming Silver Soldiers anthology hits a little different for me than the previous anthologies. The timing is perfect because I am wrapping up a seasoned-romance, slightly-futuristic cyborg series set in my neck of the woods: Central Indiana. The second in this series, Tin Toy just released in December. The third and final book in this series is Tin Soldier, scheduled to release this August, tells the story of an older-soldier-turned-cyborg, and his love interest who is dealing with breast cancer. This anthology marks the first one where my story actually ties into a full book and series. The challenge was different this time. Everything mattered this time (names, backstory, goal, etc.) because it leads into the rest of the story. Yet I wanted it to have its own decisive HEA for the reader.

Fingers crossed I’ve succeeded!

If you haven’t already pre-ordered the Silver Soldiers anthology, do so today!

Contest: For a chance at a $5 Amazon gift card, what childhood movie was most influential in your life?

About Ava

Ava Cuvay is an award-winning bestselling author of out of this world Sci-fi and Paranormal Romance featuring sassy heroines, gutsy heroes, passion, and adventure… often set in a galaxy far, far away. She resides in central Indiana with her own scruffy-looking nerfherder and kiddos who remind her daily she’s not nearly as cool as she thinks. She believes life is too short to bother with negative people, everything is better with Champagne, and Han Solo shot first. When not writing, Ava is thinking about writing. Or wine. And she’s always thinking about bacon.

Her story inside Silver Soldiers: A Boys Behaving Badly Anthology was “SNAFU—Situation Normal, All F***ed Up.”

A sidelined Army cyborg’s only joy is the dimpled smile of a curvy Pentagon admin until she offers him a proposition he should refuse…