The Applicant (Busted Labs book 1) by @AideeLadnier | Cat's Review, Guest Post, Excerpt & #giveaway @Dreamspinners

How can something so cuddly and adorable be so destructive? The teddy bear robot decimating his lab is only the first disaster of the day for roboticist Forbes Pohle. If he can figure out how to end its rampage, he still has to interview applicants for the position of research assistant and convince the time-traveler on his doorstop that they should be making their future right now. Oliver Lennox didn’t travel back in time to have a quickie in the blast chamber—but it certainly is fun. This younger Forbes is a sweeter, more innocent version of his lover. And it will be hard to leave him behind in the past.

If you like sexy nerds, humor, plenty of action, and a love story not even time can disrupt, this romantic adventure has the perfect credentials for the job. 

Buy links: Dreamspinner | Amazon 

Cat gives this one 3.5 Meows...

22-year-old Dr. Forbes Phole is working on a Teddy bear robot when he gets a persistent visitor at his door. He is set to hire an assistant today and annoyed this one won't let up on the bell. When Oliver walks in he is ready to hire on sight, but Oliver isn't an applicant. Yet. The Teddy goes on a rampage as does Oliver in a different way. He decides to take his lover's virginity before they move on to business. The business of Oliver trying to fix something in the future as he is Dr. Forbes partner in the future. Oliver has a secret he wishes he could change but isn't sure he should tamper with things too much of his reason to be there. Helping Forbes hire the right assistant and a subtle message to start a nanobot project sooner.

I liked the story. It is cute for a very short story. I think if it were a little longer I wouldn't have been so confused over a few things. There was so much mentioned and going on in both the past and future it was a bit hard to follow. I do think it is an excellent set up for a series and hope the next book is longer. Time travel isn't usually my thing, but this book was fun to read and kind of interesting. It didn't have a lot of big words or weird settings. The crazy teddy bear, in the beginning, made the story.

If you like scientists, time travel, robots, short stories and some sweet but hot man-sex, I think you will like this story a lot.

Author Guest post...

Unlikely Time Travel Devices

by Aidee Ladnier

Thank you so much Tams and Cat for hosting me today! My novella, THE APPLICANT, is being released by Dreamspinner Press and I’m so excited to tell everyone about it. In it roboticist Forbes Pohle is having a busy day. He has several applicants coming to interview for the position of research assistant, a time traveler lands on his doorstep, and his teddy bear robot is destroying his laboratory. Of course the time traveler, Oliver Lennox, is actually Forbes’s lover from the future, come to visit with an agenda of his own. And the device he uses to travel into the past was created by Forbes in the future. It looks like an ordinary belt buckle, a wide oval of black enamel that says “Kill the Aberzombies” but when it’s activated it flings Oliver forward and backwards in time.

Oliver isn’t the only time traveler to have a unique device that will allow him to visit the past. Some of my favorites include these simple items:

Toaster. After fixing a toaster that his hand got stuck in, Homer Simpson became the first non-Brazilian person to travel back in time. This classic television segment occurred in the 1994 “Treehouse of Horror V” episode of THE SIMPSONS.

Time Turner. Used by Hermione in the third book of the Harry Potter series, HARRY POTTER AND THE PRISONER OF AZKABAN, this unique piece of jewelry allowed her to take extra classes and save a wrongfully imprisoned hippogriff and animagus.

Hot Tub. A time machine of rather dubious scientific origin which runs on regrets and blackout drunkenness, it was able to transport three friends and a nephew back to a seminal moment in their lives to correct their mistakes. This time machine was used in two comedic movies, HOT TUB TIME MACHINE (2010) and HOT TUB TIME MACHINE 2 (2015). 

By claire rowland from london, uk (Flickr) [CC BY 2.0]

Police Telephone Box. While this time machine is actually not a call box but a TARDIS, it looks like it one because its chameleon circuit is broken, leaving it in the shape of a 1960s London police box. The TARDIS first malfunctioned into this shape in 1963 in the first DOCTOR WHO television episode, “An Unearthly Child.”

Phone Booth. Similar to the TARDIS, the time traveler Rufus visits 1988 in a time machine disguised as a phone booth to ensure that slackers Bill and Ted make a passing grade on their history project. Strange things are indeed afoot at the Circle K in the movie BILL & TED’S EXCELLENT ADVENTURE.

DeLorean DMC-12. The most stylish time machine on the list, Marty McFly drove this back to the past in the 1985 classic pop film BACK TO THE FUTURE. Activating the flux capacitor by accelerating up to 88 mph was an easy thing to do in this stylish sports car.

DeLorean DMC-12 Head on photo with doors open Photographed by Kevin Abato www.grenexmedia.com

Train. The ever-inventive Doc Brown, creator of the DeLorean Time Machine, also modified a train to travel back and forth in time as seen in the third installment of the BACK TO THE FUTURE trilogy, which rocketed into theaters in 1990. Now that would be first class time traveling!

So did I miss your favorite unique time machine? Want to set me straight on the best one on the list? Just comment below and let me know ;)

Excerpt from The Applicant...

Forbes Pohle worked the needle-nose pliers carefully behind the eye sensors of his teddy bear. He needed to make one little adjustment—

The buzzer on the door sounded, nerve-jangling and insistent, from the speaker overhead.

Startled, Forbes jerked the wire he was fiddling with free from its connection, rendering the small robot blind. The head-plate spring snapped, and the access panel clipped his hand as it closed. Forbes swore and shook his stinging fingers as the front door buzzer blared again.

Frustrated, he threw down the pliers and ran both hands through his mop of brown hair. Reacting to the clatter, the tiny robot turned its head left and then right before running off the table.

Luckily the teddy bear caught itself with its face when it hit the floor.

Undaunted, the bear scrambled to its furry feet and darted toward the other side of the lab. Forbes sighed at the sound of another imperative buzz.

“You won’t get the job if you don’t stop with the doorbell.” He stood and shoved the ends of his wrinkled white dress shirt back into his khaki pants. He typed in the power-down sequence for the bear before shutting the lab door and walking toward the front of the house. His visitor had graduated to using the door buzzer as percussion, the drone now going off and on in a jaunty rhythm.

Forbes still wasn’t sold on hiring a research assistant, but he wanted a lab assistant and he needed an administrative assistant.

Most of all, he longed for a friend.

Hiring someone wasn’t the best way to go about finding one, but working with somebody was a good start, right?

Forbes checked his reflection in the foyer mirror. The dark brown of his eyes was almost invisible against the bloodshot whites. His stomach rumbled, and he promised himself he’d take a break and eat as soon as the interview concluded.

At the next buzz, he spun and yanked open the large front door. Holy crap.

He wished he’d gotten a little sleep last night instead of staying up to tinker with the bear.

A wiry man stood on Forbes’s doorstep. He was dressed in a T-shirt, tight black jeans, black nail polish, and red Chuck Taylors. His strawberry blond hair was spiked up in front. The corners of his eyes and his freckled nose wrinkled.

Forbes blinked back his surprise and opened his mouth, expecting words to come out. He cleared his throat and tried again. “Come in.” Forbes waved him inside the house. “I’m Forbes Pohle. I’m the one who posted the job listing.”

The man grinned and held out a hand. “Very pleased to meet you, Dr. Pohle. I’m Oliver Lennox. Please call me Oliver.”

Forbes blushed at the title as he clasped Oliver’s warm hand. Forbes was a PhD three times over, but he hadn’t put that in the advertisement.

“If you’ll come this way, we can talk in the lab.” He turned and walked back down the hallway to the adjacent laboratory, assuming the applicant would follow.

“Oh, I didn’t come about…,” Forbes heard him say before he ran into Forbes’s back. To be fair it wasn’t his fault. Forbes had stopped short in the lab doorway.

During the few minutes he’d stepped out to answer the door, the laboratory had been destroyed.

Aidee Ladnier, an award-winning author of speculative fiction, began writing at twelve years old but took a hiatus to be a magician’s assistant, ride in hot air balloons, produce independent movies, collect interesting shoes, fold origami, send ping pong balls into space, and amass a secret file with the CIA. A lover of genre fiction, it has been a lifelong dream of Aidee's to write both romance and erotica with a little science fiction, fantasy, mystery, or the paranormal thrown in to add a zing.

 You can find her on her blog at http://www.aideeladnier.com 

~ or on her favorite social media sites: 

·         Tumblr: http://aideemoi.tumblr.com/   

·         Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/aideelad 

·         Twitter: https://twitter.com/AideeLadnier

·         Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/6570769.Aidee_Ladnier 

·         Pinterest: http://pinterest.com/aideelad/

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