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Hood and Fae: Excerpt 4

Over the next couple weeks I’ll be sharing additional excerpts from the novella Hood & Fae, the first of my new urban fantasy series Daughters of Little Red Riding Hood. Hood & Fae is currently available in the fantasy bundle Faery Realms: Ten Magical Titles on Amazon, Barnes and Noble, Kobo, Smashwords or Google Play.

My sister stood framed dramatically in the archway to the kitchenette, and as she’d promised, she was not unarmed, nor was she alone. Granny’s body wasn’t anywhere to be seen, however. The prisoner Bryn held at gunpoint was a stark naked man.

Bryn still wore the conservative charcoal suit and cream blouse she wore for work. Her russet hair was yanked back into a French braid so severe it was like maximum-security lockdown for hair. The solitary shock of color on her face was her crimson lipstick.

The man wore only his nakedness, but, holy hamburger with a side of fries, he wore it well.

There was more to him than met the eye, however, and that’s saying something, considering how much of him was meeting my eye. I’d only been wearing the red jacket one day, but I had already seen into the souls of dozens of men and women on my long bus ride over, enough to know that most people’s true souls are grubby at best, fiendish at worst. His soul showed something greater, not less, than his muscles and dimples.

If he had the body of a lumberjack, he had the soul of a Paul Bunyan. His inner self had true strength of character, as if he were the most ripped, toned, muscled, amazing piece of male at the gym of virtues. Like a giant with the cut abs and bulging biceps of a bodybuilder…except, you know, not one of those gross ones on steroids, just a naturally gorgeous Hercules. It was a shining soul, illuminated. It was a princely soul, majestic. His soul showed a man for whom honor was not a term with an expired Best-By date.

There was a big ditch in front of me called Love and I tripped and squealed and fell right in, face first into the squish.

I know, I know. I never believed in Love At First Sight either. But when your first sight is soul deep with a Deep Soul, how can you not fall in love? I knew this was a guy who—if only he could love me—would never lie to me, never cheat on me, never betray me, never give up on me, never abandon me, never stop fighting for me.

“I caught this this creep exposing himself outside the back window,” Bryn sneered.

“Look, Lady, I told you, I’m not a pervert, I’m a Forest Ranger!”

“So you decided to show us all your timber?”

“What? No!” He cupped his hands, to hide any wood. (Thanks a lot, Bryn!) “Some asshat sucker-punched me and stole my uniform and my truck. I followed the truck here.”

“You must be Cormac!” I exclaimed.

Cormac tore his gaze away from Bryn for the first time. He nodded warily. “How did you know?”

“Tell Bryn your last name. Bryn, go down into the basement and look at the name on the uniform there. If it matches, you’ll know Cormac is the Real Deal.”

In so many ways.

“I’m not lowering this gun,” Bryn said.

“Lady, like I said, if you weren’t a girl, that baby-gun wouldn’t save you. You have seriously pissed me off.”

“Bring it on, pervert, if you want your ass handed to you.”

And what a fine ass it was too. I shook myself. Focus, Roxy. No, not on that.

“Bryn, just get his uniform and check his story.” I retrieved more ammo for my gun out of the false bottom of my picnic basket. “I’ll watch him.”

“You have a gun too?” Cormac demanded. “And you keep your ammo in a picnic basket? What is wrong with you people?”

Hood & Fae is currently available in the fantasy bundle Faery Realms: Ten Magical Titles on Amazon, Barnes and Noble, Kobo, Smashwords or Google Play.

WARNING: This novel is only appropriate for older teens and adults, because it contains #$%*&@ words. Spelled out for real, though. Even that one that starts with “F.” Yeah, it’s in there, in a couple places. Also, “dumbkof,” but that’s in another language, so it won’t bother you.

Hood and Fae: Excerpt 3

Over the next couple weeks I’ll be sharing additional excerpts from the novella Hood & Fae, the first of my new urban fantasy series Daughters of Little Red Riding Hood. Hood & Fae is currently available in the fantasy bundle Faery Realms: Ten Magical Titles on Amazon, Barnes and Noble, Kobo, Smashwords or Google Play.

With a light tap, I pushed open the door to the bedroom. Cold air hit my face, raising goose pimples. The scent of lemons and wet dog fur was strong, but Granny Rose didn’t have a dog. She said she couldn’t keep pets out here because of the coyotes.

She lay on her bed, on top of the neatly tucked bedspread. She wore a velour tracksuit and a headscarf over curlers. The real TV, a flatscreen, was in here, and blared at a volume suited to the hard-of-hearing. Reruns of Bewitched. Her face tilted away from me. Her body was so still, a chill chased my vertebrae. It made me think of Mom, eternally sleeping.

“Granny Rose?”

I approached slowly. My feet sank in the plush carpet.

The bedroom had been decorated more recently than the living room/kitchenette. Mauve and powder blue and lemon yellow daffodils covered everything. Kittens and kitschy quotes, embroidered by various goddaughters and framed ornately, fought for space on the walls. The most elaborate featured a Bible quote: “For the Lord sees not as man sees: man looks on the outward appearance, but the Lord looks on the heart.” – 1 Samuel 16:7. An air conditioner roared in one window even though it hadn’t been particularly hot today.

She still did not move, or turn to look at me.

I edged around the bed so that I stood before her. Finally her watery blue eyes moved to meet mine. A smile dimpled her wrinkled jowls.

“Hello, dear. I didn’t hear you come in.”

“I put the pies in the kitchen.”

“Pies?”

“For the bake sale?”

“Of course, dear. Of course.”

“Are you okay, Granny Rose?”

“I love this episode,” she remarked. Her eyes strayed back to the TV. “Darrin sprains his ankle and Samantha gives him magic powers.” She gestured dismissively. “He gives them back at the end.”

“All those sit-coms returned everything to the status-quo by the end of each episode,” I said, but my heart wasn’t in it. Everything looked so normal and felt so wrong.

Granny Rose never calls me “dear,” she calls me “dumbkof.” Also, why didn’t she ask (demand) to inspect the pies? Or offer a sharp tongued critique of my cooking? Or grill me about whether I used real sugar or some of that fake modern stuff she was convinced caused cancer in mice?

When I looked at her I saw a second image flickering over her body, not quite visibly. I started to sweat. I slipped off my red jacket. She looked normal. I slipped my jacket back on, and the flicker started again.

“You can’t ever have the status quo back,” she said. Her lip curled, showing yellowed teeth. “Once you have tasted true magic, you can never go back to what you were before.”

She met my eyes again, and hers gleamed like a predator’s in the dark.

I swallowed.

“Granny, why do your eyes look whacked?”

“I put some new eye drops in, to see you better, my dear…”

Hood & Fae is currently available in the fantasy bundle Faery Realms: Ten Magical Titles on Amazon, Barnes and Noble, Kobo, Smashwords or Google Play.

WARNING: This novel is only appropriate for older teens and adults, because it contains #$%*&@ words. Spelled out for real, though. Even that one that starts with “F.” Yeah, it’s in there, in a couple places. Also, “dumbkof,” but that’s in another language, so it won’t bother you.

Hood and Fae: Excerpt 2

Over the next couple weeks I’ll be sharing additional excerpts from the novella Hood & Fae, the first of my new urban fantasy series Daughters of Little Red Riding Hood. Hood & Fae is currently available in the fantasy bundle Faery Realms: Ten Magical Titles on Amazon, Barnes and Noble, Kobo, Smashwords or Google Play.

Navigating the buses with my new picnic basket, loaded with five pies and a gun, nicely occupied my mind for a while. On the bus, though, I couldn’t escape the fact that public transit serviced a lot more of the undead than I had ever noticed before.

I saw a flickering zombie with a gaping chest wound, two softer ghost ladies rather frayed about the edges, a hooker who had demon horns and shiny red skin, and something naked, male, and gray that had a hard-on and the head of a squid. Ew.

Those spirits had no bodies, so I noticed them first. The passengers looked different too, though I had to peer deeper, past the flesh suits, into their souls. Sometimes the souls mirrored the body; just as often, not. The lady across the aisle from me turned to watch me watching everyone else. Her soul had no color and her eyelids had been sewn shut.

I shuddered. Did my soul look like that? Willfully blind?

In the interest of science, experimenting, I took off the red leather jacket. The ghosts and the souls disappeared. The bus looked a lot emptier and a lot less freaky. But now that I had seen the other reality, it made me itch to sit there blindly. What if one of the spirits decided to creep up on me? What if another one thrust its claw into my chest? I’d never know until I doubled over with a heart attack.

I slipped the red jacket back on. I could see the ghosts now. One of the monsters turned and winked at me, leering. I sank into my seat. The world is a more crowded place when you see spirits, but surprisingly, it also makes a lot more sense.

I put my hands in my pocket. The gun was packed inside the false bottom of my picnic basket, but there was something in the pocket. The little black business card.

Domitian Drake, you sly scoundrel. This jacket is worth more than $100,000. I bet that line you fed me about it belonging to your momma was bullshit. It had to be. He’d claimed my mother bought the jacket from his mother’s estate sale, but I had noticed my grandmother wearing this jacket in the photo taken in the 1960s. I knew both my grandmother and my mother had worn special clothes while speaking to the dead, though I’d never been allowed in the room during those sessions. Now I was 99% certain they’d worn this jacket.

I’d always thought they were ashamed of how they fooled gullible people, and that was why they’d never let me watch them conjure the dead. Now I realized they kept their work secret because it was honest-to-God necromancy, if that wasn’t an oxymoron. The dead were scary bastards.

Hood & Fae is currently available in the fantasy bundle Faery Realms: Ten Magical Titles on Amazon, Barnes and Noble, Kobo, Smashwords or Google Play.

WARNING: This novel is only appropriate for older teens and adults, because it contains #$%*&@ words. Spelled out for real, though. Even that one that starts with “F.” Yeah, it’s in there, in a couple places. Also, “dumbkof,” but that’s in another language, so it won’t bother you.

New Novella in Faery Realms Bundle

I’ve recently written a new novella, Hood and Fae, that’s included in this new fantasy bundle, Faery Realms. Hood and Fae will be part of my upcoming Urban Fantasy series, Daughters of Red Riding Hood. Find out more about the Faery Realms set below!

FAERY REALMS: TEN MAGICAL TITLES (Multi-Author Boxed Set, novels & novellas)

*Purchased individually, these books cost over $15 – List price $9.99 – Save 90% – Now on sale for only $0.99 cents!*

Download the bundle from Amazon, Barnes and Noble, Kobo, Smashwords, Google Play or iTunes.

Enter the magical realms of Faery with these ten award-winning, bestselling fantasy authors. Each title in this sampler collection offers a new and different world full of mystery, love, and most of all, fae enchantment!

Over 1400 pages of stories, with *exclusive* titles from Alexia Purdy, Tara Maya, and Anthea Sharp! Together, these books have over 250 5-star reviews on Amazon and 150 5-star reviews on B&N.

Best for ages 13 and up.

THE FAERIE GUARDIAN – RACHEL MORGAN

Kickbutt faerie Violet is about to graduate as the top guardian trainee of her class, but when an assignment goes wrong and the human boy she’s meant to be protecting follows her back into the fae realm, a dangerous plot is set in motion. (298 pages)

THE WITHERING PALACE (A Dark Faerie Tale 0.1) – ALEXIA PURDY *Exclusive Content*

Untold darkness rules the Unseelie realm of the Land of Faerie. Hidden in this vast area, Aveta, the future queen of the Unseelie Army, perfects her gifts over lifetimes. Learning that magic isn’t the only way to manipulate the world around her, this naive girl grows into a woman of strength and cunning, ultimately becoming one of the most feared leaders in Faerie.

DARK PROMISE – JULIA CRANE & TALIA JAGER

Rylie’s life is turned upside down when a stranger knocks on the door, claiming to be her real mother. Soon she will have to face the terrifying fact that not only is she a faery, but one that has been promised to the dark prince. (240 pages)

FEYLAND: THE FIRST ADVENTURE – ANTHEA SHARP

High-tech gaming and ancient magic collide when a computer game opens a gateway to the treacherous Realm of Faerie. Jennet Carter never thought hacking into her dad’s new epic-fantasy sim-game would be so exciting… or dangerous. But behind the interface, dark forces lie in wait, leading her toward a battle that will test her to her limits and cost her more than she ever imagined. (65 pages)

BLOOD FAERIE – INDIA DRUMMOND

Unjustly sentenced to death, Eilidh ran—away from faerie lands to the streets of Perth, Scotland. When she discovers a human murdered by one of her own kind, she must choose: flee, or learn to tap into the forbidden magic that cost her everything. (264 pages)

HOOD & FAE (Daughters of Red Riding Hood) – TARA MAYA *Exclusive Content*

Roxy Hood is just trying to make ends meet to pay her mom’s medical bills. Sure, Roxy takes on some jobs of, ahem, dubious integrity, like pretending that she can speak to the dead. But hey, that’s harmless. It’s not like a malignant ghoul is going to attack her. Or a sexy billionaire will show up trying to buy her red jacket. Or a werewolf will attack Granny Rose. Because that would be whacked.

THE DARK FAE – TERRY SPEAR  USA Today Bestselling Author

Alicia can recognize the mischievous fae when they show up to “play” with the humans. Only now she’s faced with one highly annoyed dark fae and she’s certain he knows the truth about her. She can see him, which means her life is forfeit. (184 pages)

EHRIAD – JENNA ELIZABETH JOHNSON

Cade MacRoich is Ehríad, an outcast of Eile. While hunting Otherworldly monsters in the mortal world, he discovers Meghan, a young woman whose magic seems very familiar … Three scenes from Faelorehn – Book One of the Otherworld Trilogy, told from Cade’s perspective. (84 pages)

ONCE (Gypsy Fairy Tale) – DANA MICHELLE BURNETT

Harmony’s life will never be the same… Every day is just as normal, and just as boring, as the one before it… And then the Carnival comes to town. Suddenly, Harmony’s small town world is overtaken by the handsome Kieran and she discovers that not all fairy tales are pretend. (140 pages)

FAE HORSE: A Faery Tale – ANTHEA SHARP *Exclusive content*

Accused as witch, Eileen flees for her life. When a strange black horse appears, her only hope of escape, she mounts it—to discover the cost of her ride may be more than any mortal could bear. (20 pages)

Download the bundle from Amazon, Barnes and Noble, Kobo, Smashwords, Google Play or iTunes.

SELECT REVIEWS:

“It was fast paced, entertaining, witty, and even swoon-worthy at times. Rachel’s characters were fun to follow, and Violet is sarcastic and strong and a force to be reckoned with—everything I love in a female lead.” –Cover2CoverBlog review of The Faerie Guardian

 “Turmoil, heartache and unexpected romance – all three are immersed into this tale of the Fae.”— Craving YA Reads review of Dark Promise

“The plot was fast paced and interesting … I can’t recommend the rest of the trilogy enough.” –The Mad Reviewer on Feyland: The First Adventure

“All in all, this is hands down one of the most unique Fae stories I have ever read before- India Drummond has truly created a beautiful world.” –Avery’s  Book Nook review of Blood Faerie

“Enter the World of the Fae: Magical worlds aren’t just for young adults, I enjoyed this tale and look forward to reading the other books in this series.” –ParaNormal Romance Reviews  of The Dark Fae

“I thought this was a great, quick summer read! Great story combined with bits of mythology and Irish folklore. I read the entire trilogy in a few days.” –Kristin David on Ehriad

“Once I started this book I could not put it down, I had to know what happened next.” ~ Amazing Book Come To Life review of Once (Gypsy Fairy Tale)

Download the bundle from Amazon, Barnes and Noble, Kobo, Smashwords, Google Play or iTunes.

Introducing Hood and Fae

I’m both excited and nervous today. Why? ‘Cause today I’m releasing a novella that introduces my new Urban Fantasy series, Daughters of Little Red Riding Hood.

The first novel in the series, which won’t be out for a few more months, shows Roxy Hood, and her sister Bryn Hood, taking over their mother’s business. What’s on that menu for that book? One entrée of finding justice for the undead, with a side of hunting werewolves….

I couldn’t start telling the story Red Riding Hood’s descendants without tipping my hat to the original story of Little Red Riding Hood. At first I figured I’d start the first novel in the series that way, but it went a different direction. So how about a prequel? A glance at my writing schedule showed me I had exactly two weeks to write a completely new story. Okaaaaaay. A petite prequel! That’s how this novella was born.

To do a retelling, I found I had to first answer some basic questions: How did Roxy and Bryn inherit the “Clogyn,” the magical red hooded jacket? What powers does the red hood have? Who is Granny and why does she live in the woods? How can I sneak a sexy billionaire and a dragon into this story? How can any retelling of that story be true to the original story of a ditzy girl carrying pies to Granny and also showcase a kickass heroine? Did you know that in the original Grimm version, Red Riding Hood gets eaten by the Wolf?! WTF is up with that?

I hope you’ll read and find out!

Hood & Fae (Daughters of Little Red Riding Hood) is an Urban Fantasy novella that will be released April 15, 2014 in the special collection Faery Realms: Ten Magical Titles. You can download the bundle from Amazon, Barnes and Noble, Kobo, Smashwords or Google Play.

Roxy Hood is just trying to make ends meet, to pay her mom’s medical bills. Sure, Roxy takes on some jobs of, ahem, dubious integrity, like pretending that she can speak to the dead. But hey, that’s harmless. It’s not like a malevolent ghoul is going to attack her. Or a sexy billionaire will show up trying to buy her red jacket. Or a werewolf will attack Granny Rose. Because that would be whacked.

WARNING: This novel is only appropriate for older teens and adults, because it contains #$%*&@ words. Spelled out for real, though. Even that one that starts with “F.” Yeah, it’s in there, in a couple places. Also, “dumbkof,” but that’s in another language, so it won’t bother you.

Excerpt

My phone dropped from my hand but I was too stunned by the stranger standing on my front doorstep to notice. He locked his brilliant green eyes on mine and I couldn’t move, or even breathe.

If sexy caused earthquakes, he’d be a Magnitude Wow.

Maybe he was a movie star. That would explain the limo. Hollywood wasn’t far. All sorts of unlikely people showed up, even after six years, to consult my mother.

His suit whispered money. Black suit, black shirt, black tie, black on black, black as a black hole wrapped around his body, stealing light and capturing it into permanent orbit.  Underneath the CEO slick, though, he could have been a Navy Seal with that physique. He exuded so much Raw Male, he erased every man I’d ever met from my working memory; I couldn’t even picture last night’s one-hit-wonder any more. All I could see were those emerald eyes in that chiseled marble face. His skin was too pale—he sure didn’t work outside—during the day—but his tightly cropped bullion hair had a military flair. He smelled like all-night-sex on hot sand over a buried fire pit. Opaque heat radiated from him, as if he were a hidden sun in human form, scorching without illuminating, burning in the dark. I wrenched my eyes away from his intense gaze. I could feel my heart sprint like a deer fleeing an erupting volcano.

He didn’t look like the type who believed in ghosts.

Yet…there was an edge to his almost-smile that suggested he might be a man haunted by something.

“Roxy Hood.” He made my name sound dirty, in the most delicious way. He had an accent, antique and British, with something more dangerous and exotic folded inside the cultured cadence. “I believe you dropped this.”

For a short time only, Hood & Fae will be available for a special price of just $0.99 in the collection Faery Realms: Ten Magical Titles from Amazon, Barnes and Noble, Kobo, Smashwords or Google Play. Email my assistant at katie@misquepress.com for a free PDF review copy of Hood and Fae.

Cover Reveal: Faery Realms

I’m excited to show you all the cover I designed for a new fantasy bundle coming out this week: Faery Realms.

Not only will this collection have lots of great stories from some top indie fantasy authors, but it will have a brand new novella to my upcoming urban fantasy series, The Daughters of Little Red Riding Hood.

Stay tuned for the final release day information and more on my new novella, Hood and Fae!

Speakeasy Dead by Vicky Loebel

Take a peek inside Speakeasy Dead: A Roaring Twenties Historical Urban Fantasy by Vicky Loebel, a romantic zombie comedy.

Download Speakeasy Dead from Amazon or listen to it via Audible.

Excerpt

I: Follow the Swallow

Trust no one.
—The Boy’s Book of Boggarts

Bernard:

LOOKING BACK, it was the phrase “human sacrifice” that tipped me off something was rotten in the state of Falstaff, Arizona.

“Don’t you dare break a single one of those bottles,” my cousin Clara hissed over her shoulder. I tightened my grip, and the enormous black satchel I was carrying containing a couple of baby elephants and—apparently—glass bottles ceased its horrified clanking.

It wasn’t witchcraft, a word of passing acquaintance to any red-headed youth raised in our town. It wasn’t magic. In that age, everything was magic. Electricity was magic, telephones, biplanes lifting off the brown grass next to the county fairgrounds, jazz records blowing the crazy rhythms of the South up under the skirts of New York and Chicago were magic.

“Guard this”—Clara set her own satchel on the ground— “with your life.”

Cinema was magic and, of the many wizards of the silent screen, most magical of all was Beau Beauregard: war hero, vaudevillian, dancing heartthrob of Ali Baba’s Arabian Knights and the even more popular Blood of Ali Baba. Beau Beauregard who, as Clara and I crouched in the dark alley between a row of ash cans and the Falstaff Ninepin Fellowship building, lay writhing in agony across the street at the Hollywood Grand Hotel, suffering from an advanced case of peritonitis, close to death.

All very tragic, but I was still working on Clara’s “human sacrifice” remark.

“A human what?” I bumped against one of the ash cans.

“Quiet, dummy!” Clara sidled over to the Fellowship’s coal chute and turned a key in the padlock. We ducked again as an open jalopy coughed and sputtered up the gravel alley behind us.

The air was cool, the evening brilliant in that benign way Mother Nature sometimes has, starry bracelets glittering around the limpid wrists of Heaven. Across the street around the front of the building, lights blazed, cars blared, and people called excitedly to one another as the three-day gala opening of the Hollywood Grand Hotel got underway, while through the Ninepin Fellowship’s back door, a dance band could be heard playing an Al Jolson tune:

When your dreams fall apart
And despair fills your heart
Follow the swallows back home.

A catchy sentiment, but one I couldn’t entirely agree with, since home for the particular swallow I was following was, in fact, the building we were breaking into. And I suspected despair lay ahead.

“Did you say….” I glanced uncomfortably from the coal chute to the back door, left open for ventilation, to the coal chute again. “Human sacrifice?”

Clara produced a brass can and oiled the coal chute hinges. I was beginning to wonder why she’d instructed me to dress in the second-best high school baseball uniform I’d never outgrown. It was hardly the glad rags I’d expected to don for an evening of escorting surplus females around the Ninepin Fellowship’s dance floor.

Clara tilted the narrow chute open. “In you go.”

“Me?” I staggered aghast. Nevertheless, despite the fact that I was three years older than Miss Clara Woodsen, a returning senior at Falstaff University (Delta Kappa Kilta), and a member of the superior sex to boot, I wasn’t surprised to find myself, moments later, swallowing dust at the bottom of a very dark hole. Thus has it always been between myself and young C. She calls the shots. I take the lead in the chest.

“Ouch.” A lump of coal probably doesn’t mind the six foot drop into a cellar, but my backside was complaining. Fortunately, the space was empty, swept up neatly for summer by the Fellowship’s Hungarian janitor. I dusted my hands and caught the satchel Clara was lowering on a rope.

“Mind the bottles,” she admonished.

I untied the swag, received my cousin’s smaller, lighter bag, and then provided a clean, soft landing pad for Clara’s patent-leather Mary Janes.

There are females whose shoes I’d happily invite (girl attached) to drop six feet into my lap. There are others for whom, upon consideration, I’d chivalrously volunteer. Seventeen-year-old cousins belong to neither category, but since Clara leapt before I looked, my backside received another bump on the floor while my front endured a more painful indignity.

“Ow!” I curled into a ball like an electrocuted caterpillar.

“Bernard Benjamin” —Clara flicked a flashlight— “stop fooling around!” She’d dressed for the occasion cat-burglar-style in my best baseball uniform, waist-length rag curls tucked under a man’s cap, looking convincingly masculine except for the Mary Janes.

Clara picked up her bag and tiptoed toward the door.

“Hey!” I lifted my luggage and legged it, limping, behind.

The coal-room opened onto a dimly-lit mad alchemist’s laboratory, complete with gas jets, bubbling beakers, and six enormous stills topped with spiraling copper tubes. Sparks crackled along bent wires connecting a sequence of copper globes. Cabinets of herbs and powders surrounded a long wooden workbench cluttered with bowls, and stacks of crates and wooden barrels were lined up in rows against the walls. The smell of yeast and juniper berries scented the air.

Across the lab, facing away from us, a matronly woman in a severe brown ankle-length skirt was filling two jugs from a barrel of gin.

Hullo Priscilla—

Clara’s palm throttled my greeting and dragged me sideways into shadow. We waited, listening to muffled music from above, until Clara’s half-sister, Priscilla, finished filling and hustled her jugs out the laboratory’s secret door.

In case you’re wondering, let me present a few facts:

Fact A: The building we’d just broken into was the Falstaff Ninepin Fellowship, a combination witches’ coven, bowling alley, and saloon of limited local repute.

Fact B: Young Clara’s half-sisters (she has four, witches, wicked, all), while not exactly owning the coven, rule over it with fists of steel.

Fact C: The thumping music upstairs issued from a three-day dance contest Clara, herself, was staging to coincide with the elaborate opening of the Hollywood Grand Hotel.

Fact D: Men can be witches (a warlock is something else). And no, I wasn’t one myself.

So there you have it: the situation on that fated Thursday night as I trailed Clara past her family’s illegal distillery, through the secret door into the stairwell where jazz cascaded down a set of spiral steps—and thence into the witches’ coven that filled the other half of the basement.

To follow the rest of Clara’s story, download Speakeasy Dead from Amazon or listen to it via Audible.

To find more from Vicky, visit her website, Facebook, Twitter and Pinterest.

King of Bad by Kai Strand

Check out the first book in Kai Strand’s Super Villain Academy series: King of Bad.

Jeff Mean would rather set fires than follow rules or observe curfew. He wears his bad boy image like a favorite old hoodie; that is until he’s recruited by Super Villain Academy – where you learn to be good at being bad. In a school where one kid can evaporate all the water from your body and the girl you hang around with can perform psychic sex in your head, bad takes on a whole new meaning. Jeff wonders if he’s bad enough for SVA. He may never find out. Classmates vilify him when he develops good manners. Then he’s kidnapped by those closest to him and left to wonder who is good and who is bad. His rescue is the climactic episode that balances good and evil in the super world. The catalyst – the girl he’s crushing on. A girlfriend and balancing the supers is good, right? Or is it…bad?

You can download King of Bad from Amazon and Barnes and Noble.

Excerpt

The Deadwood Hunter Series by Rachel M. Raithby

Check out the first two novels in The Deadwood Hunter series by Rachel M. Raithby: Lexia and Whispers of Darkness.

Lexia thought she was normal, ordinary…

Lincoln thought he’d spend the rest of his life seeking revenge…

Find out what happens, when the one you love is your enemy…

When Lexia sneaks out one night to go to a party, she hardly expects to be attacked by vampires. Much less be able to kill them with her bare hands.
That night triggers events Lexia can’t escape and soon she struggles to keep up a facade around her friends and family.
And then there’s Lincoln; she finds herself irresistibly drawn to him. But Lexia senses he wants something more dangerous than a simple romance.
Lincoln has secrets and what she learns changes her life forever.
A story of love, loss, and, betrayal.
Lexia and Lincoln’s lives will never be the same again.

*This book contains some harsh language and sex scenes*

Download Lexia from Amazon.

All Lexia ever wanted was to graduate from high school and leave Deadwood.
Now she would give anything to have her quiet life back.
Her Father was murdered and her best friend, Alice kidnapped. With the help of Lincoln, the Panther Shifter she has fallen in Love with; they rescue Alice. But rescuing her wasn’t as easy as first thought and Lexia and Lincoln barely make it out alive.
Lexia met her Mother, the Mother she thought had left her as a baby. But Secrets unravel and Lexia learns who she really is.

Her Mother created her and she was created for one purpose only…

Darkness.

Follow Lexia as she runs from her Mother and the fate she set for her.
Can Lexia fight the Darkness within her?
Can she have the ‘happily ever after'” she wants?
Only one thing is certain, sacrifices will be made and lives will be lost.

Download Whispers of Darkness from Amazon or Smashwords.

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Finding Esta by Shah Wharton

Finding Esta is the tumultuous tale of one extraordinary woman’s journey of self-discovery within a supernatural underworld.

Excerpt

If you wrote those words, I doubt you could hurt me. His eyes shone, tears lingered, longing for release. Great swaths of grey grief poured from him and pierced my chest. I winced at the sting of his need, his loss.

Is it you? Did you ever find your Esta?

Despite the possibility of immense pain, I now longed for him to touch me. It made no sense, but I needed it. Perhaps to prove him real, not a hologram? Perhaps to see if I could? And like he’d heard my desires, he raised his hand towards my cheek again. This time I made no attempt to block him, I simply braced myself, the cloth of my outfit in my fists at my sides. I clenched my jaw and held my breath, but my eyes remained open; I had to see him, his reaction.

We stared at one another, waiting for the touch that might even kill me. His fingertips made contact with my cheek and a cool, soft, and electric stimulus passed through my skin.

Immense emotion poured from them, into me. But no pain followed, nor visions to flood or cripple me, no agonies of histories. When he saw me relax into his fingertips, he cupped my cheek fully and I felt, for the first time in my life, the absolute wonder of painless flesh on flesh touch. My hand flew to hold it in place. I never wanted it to end. And from his chest passed the purest of all emotions … love.

Is that for me? But …?

For a perfect moment, I thought if I died right then, it wouldn’t be too bad.

Tears of my joy soaked his gentle palm, and I forgot about the razor, the house, the loss of Flo and Ada, my mysterious loitering stranger with his messages, dreams and unspoken intent. Even the blood’s allure dissolved, somewhat.

We remained in this odd position for what seemed like hours. Until I coughed, feeling more and more weak. He removed his hand and licked my tears away with his blood soaked tongue. This broke my reverie and reawakened my hunger for blood.

Hovering above me, his face now over mine, I lay admiring him and the blood colouring the otherwise white glare of his complexion. The smooth glow of his flesh shone through a midnight blue, sheer woollen sweater. I imagined my tongue licking vanilla ice cream and finding his flesh instead. I wouldn’t have minded.

My head buzzed, stomach churned with physical attraction and mounting hunger, an intoxicating blend I found increasingly hard to resist. He sunk towards me, still suspended by some magical force.

What the hell am I feeling?

I should have screamed, fought, fled. But the tranquil aura circling us, overflowing with soft light, filled me with a sense of love, true or false. It oozed from him like blood from a wound. He was the most arresting being I’d ever encountered, other then Abby. Unashamed, transfixed, and willing, I lay yearning in silence beneath him. Overcome, my tears continued to dribble and my lungs stretched with held breath.

The fantastic finally killed all reason. He lowered further still, until a droplet of blood fell from the razor onto my cheek, then another fell between my lips. My autonomic response was to lick it, savour it, drink it, which of course horrified me. But the taste was too divine to deny myself. My hunger multiplied, my body screamed that I needed it. The blood raced through my veins, moistened dusty pathways, cleansed the drought.

“Ah …” I adored it, right up until my vegetarian conscience asserted itself, and as much as I’d savoured its taste, reason said to spit, choke, vomit. I turned my head to do so, but the demon grabbed my face to stop me.

He sliced the razor across his tongue, gasped in pain until his lips found mine and luscious blood flooded my mouth.

He delivered my first kiss and I sucked, licked, and drank him in.

No pain or visions interrupted the sensation of his unadulterated passion, which rode into me on each blood cell.

My body sang the sweetest sonnet. Such a kiss reached way beyond the famous Charlie Brown kiss I’d dreamt of as a child. I soared through midnight starry skies like an Apollo spacecraft, right up into a completely new dimension. I zipped around glorious moonbeams and chatted with the man on the moon … I mean this was epic.

My mind called out to anyone who might hear it, hoping that my Shadows shared my frequency, even if I couldn’t share theirs.

“If I die today, now, know that I died one happy lady.”

To read the rest of Finding Esta, you can download it from Amazon.

Find more from Shah on her website, Twitter, Facebook and Pinterest.