The Top Ten Quotes We Love from The Cosmic Turkey

​​Happy third publishing anniversary to our fifth book, The Cosmic Turkey by Laura Ruth Loomis! Author Sage Blackwood calls this light-hearted sci-fi comedy “just what the doctor ordered for these times,” and author Dean Gloster calls Turkey “a fast-paced, humor-filled journey I couldn’t put down.” It’s perfect for fans of Douglas Adams!

Need a bit more convincing to dive into the book? Then read the ten awesome quotes (excerpts, really) from The Cosmic Turkey that we’ve compiled here!

​1. We stepped off the lift and emerged next to the port, in an area that appeared to be the salvage yard. In front of us stood a battered husk of metal shaped like an ugly long-necked bird—a turkey, maybe—with the tail about to fall off. It was burned in some spots and rusted in others, with a shuttlecraft-sized hole in one side.

“Here’s your ship,” he said, giving it a cheerful pat.

I stared. “Can I change my mind and go to jail instead?”

The tail fell off.


2. The shelf over the bed held a few books—the archaic paper kind, not electronic ones—presumably left behind by a previous occupant. . . . The Space-Faring Moron’s Guide to Common Science Fiction Plot Devices looked well-thumbed. I pulled it down and scanned the introduction.

You’re space-faring. You’re a moron. You should have stayed home.

Not a promising beginning.


3. “If everything’s fixed, then why isn’t the computer talking to me?”

“It’s in a bad mood,” Frink explained. “It’s been giving us the silent treatment ever since it found out we don’t have an engineer.”

“It wasn’t always in a great mood before that,” Zeeko added. “They’re going to try sending it to either a cryogenecist or a spiritual adviser next.”


4. Pluto was not most people’s favorite place to travel. It was freezing cold, somewhere between absolute zero and the temperature of my ex-boyfriend’s heart. Their idea of an exciting tourist destination was the Great Frozen River. Worldwide heating technology had improved parts of the planet from deadly to merely insufferable. The extra-light gravity required non-Plutonian visitors to use special weighted boots and ridiculous amounts of hairspray.


5. Exalted Leader stared down at me, his dark eyes bulging, jowls quivering. I had no idea if he was going to say yes or order us all into the dungeon. In his frozen palace on the coldest planet in the galaxy, I was sweating so hard, it was turning to steam.

“She broke the Ban!” he thundered. You could hear the capital letter in “the Ban.” It was the sort of tone used for deep, centuries-old taboos.

. . . The guards stared at me open-mouthed. Exalted Leader waddled closer until his gray-green face was two inches from mine. “Chocolate is Banned!”


6. I turned and saw the handsomest man in this galaxy or any other. He was maybe twenty-two years old, with curly dark hair and a tan face that seemed to mix the best of all of Earth’s continents at once. His eyes were arresting, as blue as the sky would have been if the Plutonian sky wasn’t green.

“Sorry, didn’t mean to sneak up behind you,” he said. “I’m Ambassador Dangere. Please call me Beau.”

I stood breathless, wanting to say something witty about devour­ing his full gorgeous lips, except of course you can’t say that sort of thing to strangers at an alien buffet.


7. I pulled out my GeniusPhone, which was last year’s model but still had a higher IQ than the ex-boyfriend. Calling me Jam-it the Technology-Slayer, as if that even made sense! “GeniusPhone,” I said, “place a call to—”

The phone sprayed a shower of red and green sparks, then gave a dramatic wheeze and fell apart in my hand.


8. “The court’s decision is final. As a first offender, if you cannot pay the fine, you have a choice of one year in jail, one year in the military, or one year in GUPPEAS.”

“Guppies?”

“The Galactic Universal Peacemongering Paradigm Emergent Action Spacefleet. A new project in interplanetary cooperation.”

I’d never heard of it, but “peacemongering” sounded good. Jail sounded bad. Military sounded worse. So, GUPPEAS it would be. I was given thirty-seven-and-a-half hours to settle my affairs before reporting for duty.


9. Something resembling a three-foot-wide purple rubber ball bounced out of the hatch and settled next to me.

I backed up, reached into the box, and pulled a form out at random. It said Crew Manifest. “So, who are you all?”

“I’m Frink,” the grimy man said, “the pilot.” He gave a last name, but it was something Ursa Majoran and unpronounceable, so I just wrote down, “Frink.”

The purple ball sprouted two stubby legs.

The Venusian woman said, “Lolagnya og de Thurwolliger. First officer.”

Should I ask her to spell it for me? She was still glowering. I wrote down, “Lola.”

The purple ball sprouted eyes and a mouth, and said, “I’m Nlub­glub,” in the squeaky voice I’d heard earlier. “Security chief.” I shouldn’t have been surprised to realize the ball was a Jupiteran. A lot of Jupiterans were working in security these days, as their mutable forms made them impervious to most types of attack.


10. “Rough break for you,” Nina Mikeljohn observed. “You join a spacefleet that’s supposed to be about peace, and you wind up in charge of depriving a whole planet of the most divine food ever creat­ed, all because its Exalted Leader is a narcissistic, control-crazed regelworm who would ban happiness if he could figure out a way to do it.” She dangled a piece of fudge, cocking an eyebrow at Lola. “And there’s ten pounds of chocolate-covered espresso beans in the hold.”

Lola’s eyes seemed to be trying to pull the chocolate closer while her aura struggled back and forth between light and dark. I made every effort to stay focused, but that was hard when the whole bridge smelled like chocolate. And not the cheap candy-bar type, but the gourmet dark chocolate that probably originated in some secret underground confectionary on Neptune. The smell was beckoning me like an impassioned lover, taunting, alluring, begging me to reach for it.


. . . Hooked yet? Grab a copy here to see how all these quotes are tied together!

The Cosmic Turkey is book 1 of the Cosmic Turkey series, which will be expanding in December! It’s perfect for fans of The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy and Space Opera by Catherynne M. Valente. It’s available in paperback and e-book formats (DRM unlocked) on Amazon, including Kindle Unlimited, and on Barnes & Noble’s website.

The sequel, The Star-Crossed Pelican, is out now!

Check out our author interview with Laura here, our official book review here, and a character interview with Janet’s colder-than-Pluto ex-boyfriend, Pietro, here.

Other articles in our Top 10 Quotes series:
The Star-Crossed Pelican (Cosmic Turkey #2)
Sand to Glass (Mythusian Empire #1)
The Blessed (Mythusian Empire #2)
Bargaining Power
Hunter's Moon
The Disposable (Plot Bandits #1)
The Merry Band (Plot Bandits #2) COMING SOON
The Narrative (Plot Bandits #3)
The Taskmaster (Plot Bandits #4)
Painter of the Dead
The Land of the Purple Ring
​Skate the Thief (Rag and Bone Chronicles #1)
Skate the Seeker (Rag and Bone Chronicles #2)

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