Title: Novas Got Nerve
Series: Liquid Onyx, Book One
Author: BL Jones
Publisher: NineStar Press
Release Date: 06/14/2022
Heat Level: 1 - No Sex
Pairing: Male/Male
Length: 165500
Genre: Science Fiction, LGBTQIA+, family drama, sci-fi, fantasy, superhero, gay, government agents, magic, slow burn
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Description
He’s got far too much nerve. He can blow things up with his mind. Yeah. The world should probably brace itself for this one.
When Rex Nova was four years old, he became one of the world’s first superhumans.
When Rex turns twenty, he feels the drive to use his scientifically given abilities to protect the world. He leaves home to become a member of the Secret Superhero Security team, alongside three of his friends and Danger City’s own superhero, Polaris.
Rex fights murderous Mages, evil organisations, criminal mafias, his agency appointed psychiatrist, his own weird brain, and the most frightening of all, his attraction to a certain blue-eyed superhero.
Excerpt
Novas Got Nerve
BL Jones © 2022
All Rights Reserved
This Is It. This Is Our Hero
Right then. Let’s kick this off with some hardcore exposition and a whole lot of bizarre shit.
My name is Rexley Xander Nova.
Yeah. I know. Just. It’s a weird name. I have a weird name. I have weird friends. I have a weird family. I have a weird existence. No lie, this is pretty much how things are gonna be all the time going forward. So. For the sake of full disclosure. Beware.
Fun fact number two, I live in a little seaside town named Colbie.
Colbie is small, like barely there tiny. We have one school, one church, one town hall, one strip of shops, and one park. The rest of Colbie is cottages and beach. It’s the kind of place you get lost in because Google Maps has it out for you, not somewhere you’d go on purpose. The most memorable thing about Colbie is probably the town’s residents. You’ll understand what I mean by that later.
Fun fact number three, a lot of people are raised by the subspecies known as parents. I ain’t got those. I do, however, have a Roux and a Lady Mars.
Roux is my uncle, and, I gotta be honest with you, he’s one of the strangest men alive. He’s also very annoying. Prepare yourselves. Mentally. Emotionally. Possibly physically if you’re one of life’s throwers. Like, if you tend to throw things when you’re frustrated. Or afraid. Or hungry. I don’t know. Emotions are hard. And yeah, I hear you, “hungry” isn’t an emotion. But. I can’t be alone in thinking it really should be.
Maybe part of you is worried this is gonna be the start of me whinging about my bothersome parental figure. I get why you’d think that. I’m twenty and a person and, regardless of age, I think it’s just how we do sometimes. But nope. That is not it, I swear. You haven’t met him yet. And now I feel bad for you. Because if you keep going with this whole thing then you will have to meet him. So. I mean. Good luck with all of that noise, you masochists.
The other half of my parental unit is Lady Mars. She and I aren’t family in the traditional, biological sense. But we are family in all the other ways that matter.
If I tried to really, properly, describe the pure personification of epic that is Lady Mars to you, then we would probably be here forever. So, I’m gonna knock it down to the basics for now.
Lady Mars is the local “eccentric” woman who lives in the scary looking cottage and who everyone secretly thinks is a witch. The town hag if you will. Those are her words by the way, not mine. The old hag part I mean. Lady Mars isn’t old or a hag. She is a witch though. Or at least, she comes from a family with magic in their blood.
Magic runs in bloodlines, and most magical families call themselves Mages.
The existence of Mages is a secret. Not a lot of people know magic is a real thing, which is probably just as well.
Roux isn’t fond of magic. He says people cause enough of their own problems without throwing something as unstable as magic into the mix.
Lady Mars doesn’t mind people calling her a witch. I think she enjoys having everyone fear her a little bit too much. On Halloween, she dresses up like a “normal person” and tells everyone Halloween is the witch equivalent of a bank holiday. She also likes to do stereotypical witchy things like collecting crystals and wearing hooded cloaks and using made-up words when she does magic even though she doesn’t need to.
As for me, I’m not a Mage. I’m the dramatic result of a science experiment gone very right or very wrong, depending on who you ask.
I have powers. Superpowers. Most of my close friends also have abilities as a result of the same science experiment.
My father was Dr Alexander Nova. He was a massive dickhead. And also a mad scientist. He created a superpower chemical that was eventually given the name Liquid Onyx. Genuinely. Liquid Onyx. No joke, I’m basically a Powerpuff Girl.
Alex started out by experimenting on adults. Every single one of those people either died or succumbed to extreme levels of mental instability within days of being injected.
It wasn’t until he accidentally experimented on a child of fourteen that he reached a turning point. The boy’s name was Tyler Kane. He was a runaway foster kid who happened to look a lot older than he was.
Tyler survived the initial injection of Liquid Onyx, and it took nearly a month before the first signs of mental and physical sickness began to show.
Maybe some people would have seen this as yet another failure. But to a man like my father, a truly brilliant scientist, progress was progress.
Alex determined Tyler’s youth was what made the difference. With that discovery fermented in his mind, he kidnapped and injected a load of children, including his own son, with the highly dangerous and potentially lethal substance.
He discovered children under the age of ten were more likely to survive. Moreover, children under the age of five were more likely to avoid the insanity that had overtaken his previous subjects.
Some of the children died. In agony. Some of them didn’t. I’m one of the lucky ones who crawled away with my body intact.
My mind, on the other hand, is something we could argue about all day.
Those of us who did survive Liquid Onyx found ourselves able to do impossible things. Superpower type things.
Along with an individual superpower of our own, all Liquid Onyx survivors have enhanced senses, superior physical capabilities, and accelerated healing.
My father went full-on supervillain, and now I’m a superhuman who can blow things up with my mind.
I’m a character from a bloody comic book. And not a particularly good one either.
So. Yeah. That’s my baggage. Well, part of it. Definitely the biggest suitcase on the trolley anyway.
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Meet the Author
BL Jones is a twentysomething British author who spends all her free time reading and writing and taming her three much younger brothers. She works as a BSL interpreter in Bristol and lives with a temperamental bunny named Pepsi. She’s been writing stories since she was five, rarely sharing them with anyone except her numerous stuffed animals. BL has had a difficult journey into discovering and accepting her own queerness, and therefore believes that positive, honest, and authentic stories about queer people are very important. She hopes to contribute her own stories for people to have fun with and enjoy.Website | Facebook | Twitter
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