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A Bar in Texas

So I don’t live in Texas (or close enough to drive there, unfortunately) but I keep finding fun things there that make me just a little jealous. Take for instance, the movie theater chain Alamo Drafthouse. This is a really awesome theater, stadium seating and small tables, where you can have a meal while you watch a movie. Or cereal while you watch old cartoons. There is one where I live (thank you, thank you!) and I love saving up for that one awesome movie that I just really want to see on the big screen with a pizza and plate of chocolate chip cookies. But there’s also a part of Alamo that isn’t in the theater.

For adults, waiting for their movie, Alamo offers associated bars, right next door, where they can enjoy a few drinks before seeing the show. Personally, I prefer the milkshakes you can order during the movie, but I found out recently that different Alamo locations have different bars, and the one in Austin Texas just sounds so much cooler than the one here.

It is called 400 Rabbits. A friend of mine noticed the name as one of the associated company’s in Alamo’s email chain, and we wondered “what sort of company would have a name like that?” Well, Google answered, no company would–but a bar does, and the bar’s website explained why.

The Story of 400 Rabbits

“In Aztec Mythology, the goddess Mayahuel rules both fertility and the maguey or agave plant. Along with the god Patecatl, she protects the maguey and its fermented sap, or pulque. One night, in a fit of passion, Patecatl and Mayahuel consummated their relationship and Mayahuel found herself pregnant.

She gave birth to the Centzon Totochtin or 400 Rabbits, who were nurtured on pulque from her many breasts, and grew into the Gods of Drunkenness. These divine rabbits travel through the land, frequent parties and gatherings and deliver the gift of drunkenness to the people, with each Rabbit representing the different ways in which a person can experience intoxication.

While we encourage responsible consumption at 400 Rabbits, we hope the spirit of these divine and fun loving conejos permeates the room.”

Now can you see why I am just a little bit jealous? How many bars teach you mythology about drinking and alcohol? I will never look at rabbits the same way again.

Son of a Mermaid by Katie O’Sullivan

Check out this young adult fantasy novel from Katie O’Sullivan, Son of a Mermaid. The sequel is coming this May!

Shea MacNamara’s life just got complicated.

After a freak tornado devastates his Oklahoma farm, the fifteen-year-old orphan is whisked away to Cape Cod. Struggling to make sense of his new surroundings, he’s trying hard to deal with feelings of abandonment… and the emotions stirred by a girl he meets along the shore.

Kae belongs to an undersea world hidden from drylanders. The daughter of royal servants, she knows the planned marriage of her Princess to the foreign King should put an end to the war between the clans. But two things stand in the way of lasting peace: the ambitions of the foreign King’s regent, and rumors of the Princess’s bastard child.

Sparks fly when she meets Shea, but could the cute drylander really be the Son of a Mermaid?

Download Son of a Mermaid from Amazon.

Excerpt

The blue-green coolness swirled around him as his body tumbled down through the water, arms and legs flailing as he struggled to hold his breath. Millions of tiny bubbles of precious air traced the path of his descent, escaping from his clothing and through his nose.

Eyes wide even as the water rushed past, he watched a huge school of shimmering minnows part down the middle as they swam around him, surrounding him like a silvery box. Turning his face upward to the surface, he could see the blue sky receding further and further as he sank deeper into the water’s depths.

His throat and lungs burned from the effort of holding his breath. Darkness pressed hard against his eyes, and swirls of strange colors danced in front of him as his whole body strained against the lack of oxygen.

I need to breathe, he thought wildly, his whole body feeling like it was on fire. I can’t hold out much longer. His feet finally hit the mucky bottom with a thud, coming to a stop as the mud swirled around his legs.

There, hovering before him in the water, swam a beautiful woman with flowing golden hair…and a green fish tail that sparkled with golden flecks among the scales.

A mermaid.

Her big green eyes looked so familiar, like the ones he saw in the mirror every morning. She smiled at him, reaching out to take his hand. His head pounded as searing pain ripped through his throat, as if his entire body would tear apart any second from the effort of holding his breath.

The mermaid squeezed his hand and nodded. The pain receded as Shea stared into her eyes, lost in their green depths. As she nodded to him again, he opened his mouth to exhale the stale air that pounded like a jackhammer in his lungs. Large bubbles rushed to the surface as he struggled to breathe, but there was no air to be had. Only salty ocean water rushing in to fill his mouth, his lungs, his body…

Shea woke with a start, clawing at the sheets and disoriented for a full minute before remembering where he was. At the Hansen’s house. Because his own home – the farm where he’d lived and worked all his life – was gone, swept away and crushed by the freak tornado.

Download Son of a Mermaid from Amazon to find out what happens next.

Find more from Katie on her blog or her website, or follow her on Facebook or Twitter.

Unknown by Melissa Pearl

Darkness is covering the land. As the city of Mezrah grows with power and greed, the rest of the world can only stand by and wait for their inevitable destruction. The only hope against this growing power is an ancient prophecy that people have stopped believing in.

Then a star begins to fall.

Princess Kyla of Taramon stopped trusting in the power of light the day her father died. Trapped in a city she does not care for, under the watchful glare of her mother, the queen, she struggles to accept her fate.

Then a star begins to fall.

Jethro has loved Kyla for as long as he can remember. Learning that she was to marry his cousin drove a wedge between him and the feisty princess. Watching her from a distance is a torture he is unable to free himself from.

Then a star begins to fall, sparking an ember of hope and sending these two seekers on a treacherous journey into the unknown.

Dangerous Depths by Karen Amanda Hooper

Hell hath no fury like a selkie separated from his true love.

The gate to the sea creature realm is finally open. Yara wants to bask in the glow of her budding relationship with Treygan and explore Medusa’s world, but as the new leader of Rathe her powers are needed to save a sea creature she’s never met.

Rownan assumes the worst is behind him when he returns home to be reunited with his wife, Vienna, only to discover she’s gone. She traveled to the evil realm of Harte to find another gateway to Earth and was never heard from again. Rownan claimed he would go through hell to be with her, and now he must prove it.

Rownan, Yara, and Treygan will put their lives and souls at risk by traveling to the most dangerous realm of all. Love is supposed to conquer all, but no one has ever conquered Harte.

Purchase Dangerous Depths in ebook or paperback on Amazon and Barnes & Noble.

Persephone by Kaitlin Bevis

There are worse things than death, worse people too.

When the Hero’s Away, the Dragon Will Play

It was about this time in 2012 when I decided to take a chance and write a traditional fantasy book called Child of Fate. I assembled a cast of characters that were part imagination and part remnants of time spent playing Dungeons and Dragons as a kid. The real D&D, with paper, pencils, and dice. It also required lots and lots of soda and pizza so our character sheets could end up spotted with grease stains.

Child of Fate climbed slowly but steadily up the charts until in early 2013 it exploded and was selling like crazy. I was quick to use this as a springboard and wrote the sequel, Victim of Fate, early in 2013. Silver Dragon followed and the trilogy continued to perform very well. Unfortunately, a trilogy ends at three books but I still had more stories to tell.

That meant I had to start a new series about those characters. The new series was longer and dealt with established characters coming to terms with their rise to fame and power, as well as the repercussions of what happened to them in the Blades of Leander trilogy already. The new series was called Order of the Dragon, and it began with Isle of the Ape and then continued with Chasing the Dragon and Sands of Betrayal. And now, as of today, I’m excited to announce that it’s completed with the release of Dragonlady.

But does that mean that this foray into medieval fun and games is over? Well, read the book and find out! Order of the Dragon is completed, but there’s always opportunities for more adventures to spring up at any time.

With the Order of the Dragon in retreat Alto’s thoughts turn to home and his future with his betrothed, Lady Patrina of Kelgryn. But the future, once a shining light guiding him through a dark tunnel, has grown cloudy with indecision and confusion.

One last torch in the darkness remains, directing him to revisit some of his darkest times and put to rest the ghosts of his past. The ghosts he finds are more than memories, they’ve been given flesh and blood and are reaching out from beyond for him.

Defeated but not destroyed, the silver dragon has been watching and waiting. Her plans, years in the making, are coming to fruition. Only one man dares to defeat her, but Alto is the man she waits for so that she may spring her trap and rule from her mountain throne forever.

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To learn more about Jason Halstead visit his website to read about him, sign up for his newsletter, or check out some free samples of his books at http://www.booksbyjason.com.

The Gatekeeper’s Sons by Eva Pohler

In this first book of The Gatekeeper’s Saga, fifteen-year-old Therese watches her parents die. While in a coma, she meets the twin sons of Hades—Hypnos, the god of sleep, and Thanatos, the god of death. She thinks she’s manipulating a dream, not kissing the god of death and totally rocking his world. Unused to attention from anyone—god or mortal—Thanatos makes a deal with Hades and goes as a mortal to the Upperworld to try and win Therese’s heart, but not all the gods are happy. Some give Therese gifts. Others try to kill her.

The deal requires Therese to avenge the death of her parents. With the help of Thanatos’s fierce and exotic sisters, the Furies, she finds herself in an arena face to face with the murderer, and only one will survive.

Download The Gatekeeper’s Sons  for free on Amazon, Barnes and Noble, Sony, Kobo and Smashwords.

Excerpt

Whether McAdams injured himself in one of her traps or in some other way, he was nevertheless injured, and this added to Therese’s overall optimism as she scrambled beneath the cliff edge with her arms full of rocks the size of softballs. The noise of the falls thundered as she neared them and the spray hit her bare skin and chilled her, a relief after the sweat she had worked up from building her traps in Demeter’s woods.

“How long till nightfall?” she asked Than in her mind. It seemed like hours had passed, and yet the sun still bore down on them high in the sky. “Wait a minute. We never left Olympus, did we? The sun always shines, right?”

If Than answered her, she could no longer hear him this close to the crashing falls. She hadn’t thought of that! How would she make it without him?

Unlike Than and the other gods, she had no powers of telepathy and could not be sure if voices in her head were inspirations or delusions. She almost turned back. In fact, she changed her mind five or six times and nearly wore herself out beneath the cliff edge with indecision. At last she decided it was her best chance of survival to go on with her plan. “I can’t hear you anymore,” she prayed. “But I’ve decided to go on anyway.”

She reached the falls and found a hidden grotto behind the roaring water, but if McAdams came this way to her decoy camp, she would have no advantage for attack. Although there were many little nooks and crevices back here that she could climb onto, she would be open, visible, and vulnerable to his retaliation. She dropped her rocks in a heap, set down her fruit, and looked around.

At the furthest lip of the grotto on the outer edge of the falls, she found a nook way up high that just might work. If McAdams came through the grotto, she would see him, and she would be above him, with gravity on her side. She would also be hidden until he reached the point where she stood now. It also seemed, from down here, anyway, that she might have a view of the deeper canyon in case he came that route. The trick would be hauling the rocks and fruit up the steep wall nearly twenty feet to the nook. First she would try it empty-handed to see if it was possible.

Now that she couldn’t hear Than, she felt really anxious that McAdams could be coming around the corner for her at any moment, and this anxiety caused her to tremble more profoundly than she had before. The trembling made climbing up the nearly vertical wall very difficult. She used her fingers to find places in the wall to grip, and she fished around with her feet for footholds to support her weight. One false step meant falling to her death at the bottom of the canyon.

Dirt from the canyon wall got into her mouth and crunched in her teeth when she clenched them. She ran her tongue around her teeth, trying to wash it out, and she spit and gagged. She reached for another rock, keeping her mouth closed this time, breathing through her nose. A fingernail broke at the tip as she clung to another ledge, but that was the least of her worries.

Thankfully, there were plenty of strong footholds within reach of one another. When she made it to the nook, she found it was actually a cave that tunneled back into darkness. While she was glad to have all this room to store her things and move around, the unknown darkness added to her anxiety. Stop it, Therese! McAdams was the only threat worth fearing right now, she reminded herself. She walked over to the furthest edge and saw that she could indeed see most of the lower canyon from here. This just might work. There were even a few loose boulders she could move, though barely and straining with all her might. Maybe if she scooted them to the edge and found something to give her leverage, she could launch them from the nook. She needed a branch or heavy stick, but there were none around. Would her sword work, or would the rock break it? She unsheathed the sword and tested it, gently at first. The blade gave. It was too flexible. She’d have to find something else. She returned the sword to its sheath.

The sheath! It was light, but it was solid and firm. She unbelted it from her waist and tested it out. It would work! This could be her saving grace! She looked around for other such boulders and found four more loose enough and light enough for her to drag to the edge of her cave.

She re-belted her sword and sheath and climbed back down, quickly but carefully, to carry up her bundle of fruit between her teeth. Then she took the empty shirt back down and filled it with six of the softball-sized rocks. Any more than that might throw off her balance too much or be too heavy and slip between her teeth. She’d have to make a third trip down for the remaining six. She hesitated. If McAdams spotted her, she’d lose the element of surprise. Was it worth getting the remaining rocks? She decided to go for it.