Shout-Out: Caretaker by Josi Russell

Fifty years in space—alone.

Ethan Bryant was supposed to fall asleep on a ship leaving Earth and wake up fifty years later with his family on the planet Minea. Instead, after the ship’s caretaker—the lone human in charge of monitoring the ship’s vital systems—suddenly died, the ship’s computer locked Ethan out of his stasis chamber and gave him the job. That was five years ago. Five years of checking to make sure everything runs smoothly on a ship Ethan knows almost nothing about.

Who wouldn’t dread the years ahead? Who wouldn’t long for their once-bright future now stolen away?

Ethan is resigned to his fate, until the ship suddenly wakes up another passenger: a beautiful engineer who, along with Ethan, soon discovers a horrible secret—a navigation room hidden from even the ship’s computer. The ship is not bound for Minea—but to somewhere far more dangerous.

With the ship nearing its sinister destination, Ethan soon learns he is the only one who holds the key to saving all 4,000 passengers from a highly-advanced, hostile alien race.

Book 2, Guardians, is out today.

After fifty years in stasis, Caretaker Ethan Bryant and his passengers have finally arrived
on Minea. But life on the new planet isn’t the utopia that the shiny brochures back on Earth promised. Freed from the mind shackles of the Others of Beta Alora, the colonists are now enslaved by the dusty Yynium mining industry that sustains the new civilization.

When a mysterious shadow passes across the face of the planet Lucidus, it brings with it an ominous threat. Before he can find out the extent of the danger, Ethan is plunged into the vast cave system under the blue karst mountains outside the city of Coriol. There he finds evidence that his greatest fear may be realized: Humans are not alone on Minea.

Aria, a crop geneticist and Ethan’s wife, struggles to find him and to solve a deadly epidemic that is sweeping the population. Kaia, the beautiful engineer who awakened early on Ethan’s stasis ship, and her father, Admiral Phillip Reagan, prepare for a battle with a species they know nothing about. The colonists must call upon their unique gifts and work together. Human survival depends on these guardians of Minea.

The publisher is hosting a giveaway for the books.  Amazon.com currently has Guardians on sale for 0.99.