Cover reveal: RED SPAWN DELIVERY #funny #scifi #novel

It's here! The cover for book 3 in the Webrid Chronicles series!

How can a picnic go so wrong?

Ganpril Webrid’s  grandfather always told him not to use his cart unless he was getting paid for it. But this huge, hairy carter on the planet Bexilla let a friend talk him into carting beers and grub to a picnic with her old college roommate. 

Worst mistake he ever made. Before he can even burp up his first sandwich, the ol’ roomie stretches out her ten shiny legs, and out pop a hundred spawn. And before Webrid can settle his churning stomach, fifty of those spawn have been kidnapped.

Like it or not, Webrid finds himself on another planet-hopping adventure with snarky, brainy pals Zatell and Stravin and a host of wacky aliens. This time, Webrid’s cart is a playpen -- or it will be, if he can only find those blasted spawn.       

Watch for the release of RED SPAWN DELIVERY in Spring 2017.

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Excerpt: Blue Diamond Delivery, funny #scifi

Webrid is excited about the 2017 release of a third book about him. (Who am I kidding? Webrid couldn't care less.) RED SPAWN DELIVERY will be available in a few months. For

now, enjoy an excerpt from the second book in the Webrid Chronicles series...


Blue Diamond Delivery
by Anne E. Johnson

Ganpril Webrid woke up in midair.

“What the…?” He landed with a painful crunch, his wide shoulder wiping out his shelf of commemorative Valestin Hundred-Proof bottles (“Collect all twelve!”).

“Oof!” He pulled a shard of broken glass from his matted fur. That’s when he noticed he was naked.

“I guess it wasn’t a bar fight,” he slurred, as surprised as his muzzy mind would allow. At least he was at home. But something was seriously wrong. Looking around, he saw that most of his meager belongings were capsized or shifted. “Damn. How much did I drink?”

Webrid figured that, since he was on the floor anyway, he could think better if he stretched out on his back. That’s when he noticed the naked Entra lady suction-cupped to the ceiling. “Drarra, honey? Is that you? What you doin’ up there?”

With a resounding pop! pop! Webrid’s favorite paid companion loosened her head from the metal ceiling plates and bent backward to face the floor. “Oh. You still alive?” She didn’t sound thrilled. “What the hell happened?”

Webrid tried to do the gentlemanly thing and look at her face while he spoke to her. He wasn’t having much luck, so he closed his eyes. “Were we attacked by Blennf initiates, or what?”

“Nice one, Web. Mocking people of faith. Very classy.” Her sigh seemed rooted in her lower guts, in that way Webrid had heard from so many whores in his time.

“Seriously, though, what went on here?” he asked again.

Drarra pointed across the room. “I went flying off the bed, same as you. Only I’m lighter and stickier, so I grabbed the ceiling. Help me down,” she ordered, pushing a long, flexible limb toward him.

Webrid stood up in stages, fighting through aches in his hip and shoulder. “Grab hold, babe.” He reached up to get a firm grip on her appendage. “Here we go.” With gentle yanks, he unstuck her, cup by cup, pop! pop! pop!, until she was draped over his arms. “Flew off the bed, huh?” Webrid racked the one dusty corner of his brain that seemed to be working. “You’d think I’d remember sex that good.”

“Oh, please. What sex? You couldn’t manage anything but passing out when we got home last night.”

Webrid was hurt. “You gonna tell me how come we flew off the bed, or do I gotta read it in the paper?”

“It was a quake, I guess.”

Webrid picked some wax out of his ear. “You say quake?”

“Yeah, you know. Ground shaking? People flying off beds? Buildings collapsing, too, probably.”

Webrid rubbed his bruised shoulder. “Quake. Weird. And listen to that.”  

“What?”

“Outside.” Webrid was used to the sounds of downtown Bargival. He loved the wailing sirens and the vendors shouting at the honking commuters. The revving of engines was like a lullaby to him. But this morning sounded different. A whole new level of chaos.The screeching machinery sounded a lot bigger than usual, some of it hovering in the air. And more people were screaming louder. He’d have looked out the window of his tiny apartment had one. “Sounds crazy out there.” He let Drarra drip onto the bed and started searching for his pants.

“Never been a quake my whole life. And then, boom, there’s a quake? What’s that about?”

“How do I know? Something makes the rocks in the ground shift.”

Webrid, bending over painfully to look under a haphazard sculpture of piled-up furniture, turned his aching neck. “Why would the rocks in the ground shift?”

“What am I, ascientist now? It shakes, is all I know. Just look around you. This mess isyour scientific proof.” Drarra slid off the bed. “I’m hittin’ the Ladies’. Don’t bother me in there.”

Webrid dragged his gaze around his four dingy walls. “Too bad about my building.”

“What about it?” Drarra called from the bathroom. “It’s still standing.”

“Yeah. That’s my point. This lousy building stays upright, but I lose my Val-Hundred bottle collection. Where’s the justice, man?”

“Ha! You drink enough, you’ll have a whole new collection in half a moon.”

Webrid shook his head and pulled a glass shard from between two calloused toes. No point trying to explain to her that those were commemorative bottles. He’d have to deal with black market types to replace that set. Those Akardian salesmen made him cringe, skins covered in floppy lobes and tongues dripping with sweet lies.

Webrid sighed. A quake. Whoever heard of a quake in Bargival?

*   *   *

Want more Webrid? Buy BLUE DIAMOND DELIVERY directly from the publisher, on Amazon, on Barnes & Noble, and at other online retailers.

Excerpt: Green Light Delivery, funny #scifi

We're gearing up for the release of the third Webrid Chronicles novel, RED SPAWN DELIVERY, in 2017. The style of these books has been described as a cross between

Douglas Adams and Raymond Chandler.

In anticipation, it seemed appropriate to acquaint (or re-acquaint) readers with the ridiculous but lovable mess that is Ganpril Webrid, carter of the city of Bargival on the planet Bexilla in the Raralt Planetary Circle. And so, let us start at the beginning...


Green Light Delivery
by Anne E. Johnson

Ganpril Webrid, carter for the Bargival district, handed a clod of jamboro cake to the blue-skinned businessman.

He took a dendiac note in payment. “You stayin’ here?” Webrid asked, “or can I bring my cart into your space?”

Obviously pretending that he hadn’t heard, the fellow closed his window and sucked the cake down whole through a slimy blue mouth.

Webrid hated these commuter types. Somehow, they never learned the basic courtesies of urban interaction. And they were always in Webrid’s way. So he tried again, louder this time. “Can I use your space, mate?” He enunciated clearly. “How long you stayin’?”

“Bivisher! Braaap!” came the reply, the first word being an expletive, the second a burp.

“Fine. I’ll go somewhere else.” Webrid knew when he’d been licked. But he couldn’t just keep rolling along. He needed to get off the street for a while, after several hours of selling cakes to commuters, pushing his cart through the hotafternoon smog.

As he thought about how tired he was, Webrid realized that someone was standing next to him. “Yeah? I got cakes today, friend,” was his automatic response. Then he turned his head and focused his eyes.

This guy did not want a jamboro cake; he could tell that much for sure. For one thing, this “guy” didn’t appear to be biologically based. Webrid could see the wires at its joints. A great metal head lowered itself on a slender tube of a neck. A brace of digital cameras absorbed the features of Webrid’s face, which made him squirm.

“Like what you see, sailor?” he joked, but only to hide his fear. This wasn’t a Vox police robot. Not one like he’d ever seen, and he’d seen them all, what with parking tickets and contraband searches every few days. The Vox, always watching and listening, seemed to be after him constantly for one thing or another.

The robot’s head came closer to his face. Webrid pulled back. Maybe it was a cop bot after all. “I ain’t parked wrong. I’m on the move, in search of a legal space, officer.”

The robot responded with a mechanical buzz and a series of clicks. A door retracted into its central chamber, revealing a speaker. Somebody—somebody biological—spoke. “Ganpril Webrid, Second-State Licensed Carter,” it announced.

That voice! Icy snakes of déjà vu scuttled up Webrid’s spine. Clear as the bot hovering before him, he pictured the squalid back alley where he used to play with his cousins when he was a kid. Webrid huffed and shook his head, chasing away the random vision.

“Ganpril Webrid,” the voice repeated. “You have been called.”

“Eh?” Webrid had just spoken this syllable when a delicate feeler came flying out of the robot’s head and wiped across his forehead. It stung. “Hey, now, what’s the idea?”

But the thing was gone. Upward. Out of sight.

Webrid felt a headache coming on, and a strange green light pattern was starting to flicker in one eye. The light coalesced into a shape. It was not a very familiar shape, but after a moment of painful concentration, Webrid thought he recognized it. A tree? There weren’t any trees in Bargival, or on the entire planet of Bexilla. Webrid had only seen trees in pictures at school years ago. But now there was one floating in front of him, made of a green cloud. Then its particles dispersed, and there was nothing to see but the comforting grunge of the Bargival streets.

Webrid decided he needed a drink.

* * *

Like Webrid so far? You can buy Green Light Delivery  directly from the publisher, on Amazon, on Barnes & Noble, and at other online retailers.