Bienveinido a The Chocoverse!
The Chocoverse is a homage to the cheesiness of the telenovela tradition, complete with all the heart and optimism that implies. There’s a lot in the series about overcoming prejudice and finding family inside blended cultures and backgrounds. The messages of love, mercy, and hope run through all three books, summed up by Tawny’s media campaign centered around the slogan Mercy Is a Gift.
Free Chocolate
Bo Benitez, failed telenovela star, runs to the other side of the galaxy to escape the vulturazzi, only to be drawn back home when her alien boyfriend convinces her to steal the source of chocolate. She winds up in trouble, running for her life, into danger bigger than she ever imagined — and an opportunity to change the entire galaxy forever.
In the far future, chocolate is Earth’s only unique commodity one that everyone else in the galaxy is willing to kill to get their hands, paws and tentacles on.
Latina culinary arts student, Bo Benitez, becomes a fugitive when she’s caught stealing a cacao pod from one of the heavily-defended plantations that keep chocolate, Earth’s sole valuable export, safe from a hungry galaxy.
Forces array against her including her alien boyfriend and a reptilian cop. But when she escapes onto an unmarked starship things go from bad to worse: it belongs to the race famed throughout the galaxy for eating stowaways! Surrounded by dangerous yet hunky aliens, Bo starts to uncover clues that the threat to Earth may be bigger than she first thought. Free Chocolate
Pure Chocolate
In a galaxy where chocolate is literally addictive, one celebrity chef is fighting back, in the delicious sequel to Free Chocolate.
To save everyone she loves, Bo Bonitez is touring Zant, home of the murderous, shark-toothed aliens who so recently tried to eat her. In the midst of her stint as Galactic paparazzi princess, she discovers that Earth has been exporting tainted chocolate to the galaxy, and getting aliens hooked on cocoa. Bo must choose whether to go public, or just smile for the cameras and make it home alive. She’s already struggling with her withdrawal from the Invincible Heart, and her love life has a life of its own, but when insidious mind worms intervene, things start to get complicated! Pure Chocolate
Fake Chocolate
Bo’s Coming Home!
In a galaxy where chocolate is tied to dark secrets and past wrongs, one celebrity chef has to put things right, in the delectable conclusion to the Chocoverse Trilogy that started with Free Chocolate.
When disease ravages Earth’s cacao plantations, Bo Benitez returns home to help with the media spin to hide that chocolate is in danger of being lost forever. HGB has come up with a new product – one which doesn’t appease the cocoa-addicted murderous, shark-toothed aliens threatening to invade the planet. Someone has to smooth things out. Just when Bo starts to make headway, someone tries to kidnap her. While trying to avoid more would-be-kidnappers, Bo finds out that HGB is developing a cure for withdrawal from the Invincible Heart. Will she let her need to be physically whole again tie her to HGB and its enigmatic CEO? When she gets a key piece of evidence that would unravel secrets from three different planets, she has tough choices to make about the future of her world and its place in the galaxy.
Space Opera Meets Soap Opera in a Galactic War to Control Earth’s Greatest Export! Fake Chocolate
In this series, you get:
Alien Dragons
An Adorable Corgi
Laser Monkey Robots
Space Pirates
Shark Monster Soldiers
and oh, so much chocolate!
Also see the short story When Kromish Eyes are Smiling in the Fall 2019 Edition of Amazing Stories!
Download the Media Kit
Free Bonus Story
Highlighted Reviews
Complete list of Chocoverse Reviews
PUBLISHER’S WEEKLY
On Free Chocolate: “[A] clever debut … darkly comic and sometimes deadly serious.”
British Fantasy Society
“Humour, drama, action and pathos fill the pages as Bo and Brill adventure across the stars in a fun easy-to-read sequel that keeps your attention from start to finish.”
B&N Sci-Fi Blog
On Free Chocolate: “This space opera-meets-soap opera debut is, ultimately, a rollicking adventure; a heist story in which chocolate is the greatest prize of all. Yum.”
Litcast of Doom
On Free Chocolate: ” . . . The prose is excellent – even with the English/Spanish language mix – and the characters charming. This is an excellent book!”