Do you remember the TV show Buck Rogers in the 25th Century? For a while, it was my favorite show as a kid. For those who don’t remember, the premise of the show was that a US astronaut got accidentally frozen on a deep space mission and then was defrosted five hundred years later, only to find that Earth was a completely different place to the one he remembered. Although the TV producer’s vision of the future looked a lot like the era it was made—Farrah hair, shiny neon cat-suits, and mini-skirts!
The thing that really stuck with me though, *mumble-cough* years later, was that the hero was a man out of his time. All the cultural references he made were lost on the people around him. His jokes fell flat because they didn’t have the context for them. But we did. And the audience laughed along with Buck and commiserated that no one else got the joke. Although to be fair, I think sometimes we were laughing at Buck rather than with him. Go back and watch an episode, you’ll see what I mean!
The thought of being transported to the future has always tickled my imagination. What would it be like? How would you cope with the changes? Who would get your jokes? See? Fascinating, right? That’s why, when I sat down to write Red Zone, I set it around a group of Army Rangers who were the victims of an experimental chemical weapon that didn’t kill them, but put them to sleep for a hundred years instead—think Sleeping Beauty but with muscles and seriously fighting skills!
When the team wakes up, they find themselves in a whole new world. A world where their friends and family are long gone, and they don’t have homes or bank accounts or official ID. They have to learn to negotiate a path in an America that isn’t run by a democratic government anymore but by whatever company is making the most profit. Can you imagine that? Waking up to find that Apple is ruling the country? That your family and friends passed away decades earlier? How would you cope? What would you do? Especially if you knew that discovery would mean you were tied down and dissected for answers as to why you were still alive.
It’s no wonder that the Red Zone warriors keep to themselves! Which is why their leader, Striker, is hesitant to get involved when Friday Jones asks for his help. Friday is on the run from the ruling company and every police officer in the country is after her. Not exactly the best situation to stay under the radar!
But Friday has something that Striker needs. And it isn’t the same thing that everyone else is chasing her to retrieve. No, the rest of the world might be after the information in her head, the recordings of things she shouldn’t have witnessed, but Striker wants something else entirely. He wants the woman.
Only Friday can help Striker and his team to find the answers to why they’re alive, what happened to them, and what the future holds for them. She might think she needs him desperately to survive, but he needs her just as much.
RED ZONE by Janet Elizabeth Henderson
In a world where everything you see and hear is recorded by an implant
in your brain, Friday Jones has seen something she shouldn’t. And now
everyone either wants her dead or to steal what’s locked in her memory
banks.
She has no choice but to take poison that will block recall of the
information, but it will also kill her in four days if she can’t reach the
antidote. She’ll need the help of a ruthless mercenary if she has any
chance at survival.
The last thing Striker wants to do is draw attention to his team and their
special abilities. Helping Friday will do exactly that. She’s hard-headed,
smart, and a walking dead woman. But when he discovers what’s in her
head, there’s no way he’s going to leave her behind.
They’re in a race against time to save both the information and Friday,
but Striker has secrets of his own that could kill them all.
Romance Science Fiction [Entangled: Amara, On Sale: April 22, 2019, e-Book, ISBN: 9781640637917 / ]
About Janet Elizabeth Henderson
Janet Elizabeth Henderson is a Scot living in New Zealand and married to a Dutch man – it can get a little confusing in her house! She has two little girls and a menagerie of animals that keep her busy during the daylight hours. At night, when everyone is asleep, Janet writes contemporary romance. Her main aim is to make herself laugh so loudly that she wakes her husband – it’s payback for his snoring! Janet trained as a fine artist, has worked all over the world and – like some of her characters – has been fired from too many jobs to count. Janet’s main hobbies are reading, painting and talking – and not always in that order.
5 random things about me:
1. I accidentally mooned a crowd at a Bolivian wedding.
2. I’ve been chased by a gang of baboons. And I mean gang. They were organised and vicious. All that was missing was their leather jackets and tattoos!
3. I wrote my first novel when I was 22. It was a cross between Star Wars, Monsters Inc. and Tinkerbelle. Funnily enough, no one wanted to publish it. Odd that…
4. I was a portrait artist on the streets of Amsterdam for a time.
5. I worked night shift as a security guard at Stirling Castle in Scotland while I was in college. The castle was on a terrorist hit-list back then. To defend it they gave me a flashlight, a two-way radio that only worked one-way and made me wear a polyester A-line skirt…
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