SOOMEONE FELL IN LOVE WITH SINBAD: Soap Opera and a Whole Lot More

THE REVIEWS ARE COMING IN...

Sinbad’s Last Voyage…

When a naïve Navajo hires a human-hating Felidan to find her fugitive-from-justice husband, it’s clash of cultures, personalities plus a massive dose of mutual attraction…

“… if you're looking for a romance that's not another of the cookie-cutter offerings out there, this is a great place to start.” http://www.nightsandweekends.com/articles/08/NW0800278.php

“…Definitely a 5 Djinn keeper.” http://www.nightowlreviews.com/nightowlromance/reviews/Review.aspx?daoid=5427

“…one of the scant few books I will definitely read again...and again... (5 kisses)” http://www.twolipsreviews.com/content/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=5418&Itemid=36

Sinbad’s Wife:

“Ms. Sweeney always creates stories that are thrown miles outside the box, and Sinbad’s Wife is no exception.” Margaret Marr
http://www.nightsandweekends.com/articles/09/NW0900127.php 3/23/09

“…is just as gripping and exhilarating as its predecessor.” (4 kisses) http://www.twolipsreviews.com/content/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=5435&Itemid=36
Sinbad’s Pride:

“…the dramatic sh'en Singh family dynamics…in this book makes for a truly wonderful read.” (4.5 kisses)
http://www.twolipsreviews.com/content/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=5443&Itemid=36

In a way, I guess they've said it all...

I never really intended to write a series when I started Sinbad’s Last Voyage. It just happened. I was just going to tell a love story set in the future, a single-shot, stand-alone novel—of a sexy, strutting half-breed smuggler who hated Terrans and the Earthwoman who made him forget that. There would be strife, of course, because she was married and he was trying his best to keep from falling in love with her. There would be adventure as they tracked her fugitive husband across the galaxy through various dens of iniquity where she is shocked and he’s amused by that shock, but it would be definitely end Happily Ever After.

So much for that idea...

As usual with things having to do with Sinbad sh’en Singh, it didn’t turn out that way. (After all, this is a book written by Toni V. Sweeney so it had to have a Toni V. Sweeney ending…so make that it ends Mostly Happily Ever After.)

Studying it now, after three novels in the series and more to come, I realize what I really wrote is simply one gigantic soap opera set in the far, far future on a planet far, far away…and the introduction to this sudsy space saga might go something like this:

Welcome once again, dear reader, to the Adventures of Sinbad…the stories which ask the question: can a halfbreed human-hating smuggler find happiness with a very human adopted Navajo in spite of threats from the United Terran Federation and many of his nefarious criminal cohorts? Therein lies the question, to misquote ol’ Will Shakespeare, who wrote some mighty epics but whose comedies were more than soap opera-like if one chooses to look at them close enough. So why don’t we give the Adventures a once-over and see if they really do qualify to sell soap to the intergalactic masses?

The story of Sinbad and Andi is a lesson in the course of True Love running every which but smoothly. At the end of Sinbad 1: Sinbad’s Last Voyage, in between searching for Andi’s husband, fighting off old enemies, and becoming a father, Sinbad learns he’s dying of a disease contracted while he was a prisoner in the Toxic Zone, the Federation’s deadliest prison. He agrees to spend his last few months with Andi whom he now admits he loves.




Gulp! Sniffle!

Well, I couldn’t just leave it there. No sir! I had to get Sin and Andi married, and save my hero to fight another day. So, along came Sinbad 2: Sinbad’s Wife, in which, among other things, Sin struggles to convince Andi to make an honest man of him, he discovers he has a 15-year-old son, then promptly collapses into a coma brought on by his terminal disease. Piling it on even thicker (after all this is a space opera), there is only one doctor who can save Sin and he blackmails Andi into becoming his mistress before he’ll perform the surgery. Andi finds this totally ironic since Sinbad tried the same ploy before he would agree to find her first husband. That time she refused; this time, she agrees after much soul-searching, and the surgery goes without a hitch. While Sin is recovering but still in a coma, Andi is subsequently kidnapped by her former husband, a power-mad Serapian general named Tran, who makes her into a sex slave. She’s rescued by Sinbad who kills Tran in a duel-to-the-death, but not before Andi has given birth to Tran’s second son. Sin, a sucker for infants and his wife’s tears, accepts the baby, they go into a clinch…roll credits…


Whew! Are you still with me? Is this getting pretty sudsy and soapy so far? Did you see the kitchen sink peeping out from behind that last paragraph? Could I stop after that? Nosirree. So, let’s continue:

Sinbad 3: Sinbad’s Pride: You can’t keep a good smuggler down! He tried the Straight-and-Narrow but it just didn’t work. Sin’s been pardoned by the Federation, he’s a law-abiding citizen (much to his dismay) and he’s back on his home planet, being re-instated as his grandfather’s heir and about to inherit one-third of the planet Felida. Having now reached the age of thirty-one and considered a mature adult (though Andi sometimes denies that), Sin is bored and looking for some trouble to get into. He finds it in the Peace Treaty Felida signed after being defeated by the United Terran Federation. In it there’s a loophole no one, not even the Federation realizes is there, a clause preventing prosecution of any Pride member for any future crime against the Federation.



Well! When someone who hates the Fed as much as Sin does finds a document like that—even though they’ve given him amnesty in exchange for killing Tran (who was a threat to everyone and not just Andi) and posthumously pardoned his father—you know something big is going down. And it does. With the aid of the other Pride Chiefs, Sin decides to turn Felida into the biggest smuggling planet in the galaxy…and thumb his nose at the Fed at the same time. Of course, there are immediate complications, such as the fact that the Pride Chiefs want an affiliation with the operation through marriage, and send their nubile daughters to Sin as concubines. Sin tries to explain to Andi they mean nothing. It’s all politics. Andi doesn’t see it that way. There’s trouble brewing in the bedroom tonight. And for many nights to come. If the world’s sexiest cat-man doesn’t watch it, he’s going to be sleeping on the sofa until he’s an octagenerian!

In the meantime, Sin’s son Adam and Andi’s son Cash are leaving adolescence and becoming men in every sense of the word. Joining Sinbad in his smuggling operation, they begin cutting a wide swath through the females of Felida, and then—as Fate will have it, they meet the two women neither can have and both want…their father’s concubines…

Sinbad’s Pride is a play on words. On Felida, a Pride is made up of various clans loyal to one chief. Sinbad is the heir to the largest Pride. He also has plenty of pride in the usual sense of the word, and whether he’s confronting the lawyers of the Federation, an incensed wife, or an adulterous child, he has to decide when to let that pride go and when to balance revenge with mercy. No matter what happens, however, one thing is certain: Sinbad loves Andi and he’ll do anything to keep that love. It’s also a story about family, and how a man who has lost everything must now try to keep together the family he’s suddenly blessed with in the face of crises which can blast them apart. How Sin works it out makes up the majority of that story. It’s an erotic, sometimes funny, sometimes tragic adventure. I think readers will enjoy them all.

The Sinbad books are available at Double Dragon Publications, http://www.double-dragon-ebooks.com/search.php and also http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Dstripbooks&field-keywords=Toni+V+Sweeney&x=12&y=22