#Excerpt from #UrbanFantasy DESPRITE MEASURES (The Caledonian Sprite) by Deborah Jay

/ Deborah Jay / Debby Lush / 1 Comment

And now for something completely different…

I have so far shared excerpts from my Epic Fantasy, THE PRINCE’S MAN, here and here.

Today it’s the turn of my Urban Fantasy, DESPRITE MEASURES. And no, that’s not a typo.

Here’s  short blurb, so you know what you’re letting yourself in for:

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Scottish water sprite, Cassie, lives a quiet life in human guise, along with her selkie boyfriend, until a magician tries to force her to power his crazy experiment.

Escape is only Cassie’s first challenge; she falls for her dangerous fellow captive, fire elemental Gloria, and somehow becomes the prize in a contest between rival covens.

Struggling to stay one step ahead of it all, her life and loves spiral dangerously out of control.

A unique eco-urban fantasy

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Excerpt from Desprite Measures

It’s just as well I’m not claustrophobic.

Even so, being held captive in a bottle was not how I’d planned to spend my weekend.

It was also one of the most undignified positions I’ve ever been in; a water sprite can be squished down pretty small, but it doesn’t mean we enjoy the process.

Rainbows played across the clear glass walls of my prison, refracting through the swirling liquid of my elemental form. Taking a deep breath, metaphorically speaking, I tried to slow my agitated motion, in danger of over-heating. If someone would uncap my bottle, I’d be able to let off steam.

I prowled the confined space. It stood around ten inches tall, or should that be twenty-five centimetres? I can’t keep up with the speed humans alter things. My existence had flowed serenely through the millennia without need for change until the human race invented plumbing.

I’d known there might be drawbacks to living in human form but, after one too many close encounters with the local sewage farm, I’d taken the risk. It had its upsides. Elementals are solitary by nature, but I’d found that I liked having friends—not to mention the thrill of experiencing human emotions.

I don’t understand them all yet, but I’m learning.

Perhaps I should also have considered potential pit-falls, but I was still quite new to all this, and when Alison had come to me for support I’d wanted to help. Replaying the fateful conversation in my mind, I realised I should’ve smelled something fishy from the outset.

“I know it’s not your kind of thing, but will you come with me, Cassie? Please say you will,” Alison pleaded.

I considered my flame haired friend for a millisecond before committing. “Aye, of course I will, as long as you’re certain it’s what you want.”

She frowned. “What, to become a witch or go to this meeting?”

“The meeting, dear heart. I have no problem with you trying out witchcraft; all that communing with nature is so you. I’m just none too sure about this group.”

We both studied the website on Alison’s laptop.

“Look at this list of events.” I pointed to one corner of the screen. “Like this one: ‘Self-development through equine partnership’. What’s that all about?”

“But that’s only one thing,” Alison protested. “Look at the rest. Crystal dowsing, aura reading, herbalism, etcetera, etcetera.”

“Okay, okay! Of course I’ll come with you. It can’t hurt to go to one meeting, can it?”

How wrong could I have been? I know that at the first whiff of strong magic I should have run in the opposite direction. But no, that whiff had been so enticing: aromas of strawberries and cream and chocolate all rolled into one. Someone had studied the Facebook group I’d set up for my gym clients, and discovered exactly what would make me hesitate just that fraction of a second too long.

 * * * * * * *

Heartbreaking, but…

/ Marcia Meara / 6 Comments

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…I would be remiss if I didn’t make note of the fact that the world has lost a bright and shining star. Author Sir Terry Pratchett has passed on, and the world is the sadder for it.  I wish I had discovered him years earlier, but his books made an enormous impact on my life in recent years. The Wee, Free Men and I will drink a toast in his honor tonight, and  maybe even carry off a sheep or two. We will never forget him, and long may the great turtle swim on, carrying DiscWorld far and wide, forever.

And the Answer IS…Until Sunday Night!

/ Marcia Meara / 4 Comments

The question, naturally, is “How long does Excerpt Week last?” Of course, if you’ve been paying close attention here…you HAVE been, haven’t you?…you are probably already aware that I encourage folks to leave excerpts of their work any time they wish. So if you miss the “Official” deadline for Excerpt Week, you can still post one. Pretty much whenever. But we are building momentum here, and posting by Sunday night might bring you more sharing results. So…you’ve still got three days to take care of that, plus the rest of today, of course. Get posting, folks!

Excerpt: Pack Princess by Aimee Easterling

/ Marcia Meara / 1 Comment

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I am posting on behalf of Aimee Easterling who is under the weather, currently. This is from Chapter 1 of her latest novel, Pack Princess, Book 2 in her Wolf Rampant werewolf series. Enjoy!

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…When I set off for my afternoon run, the whole forest smelled like my mate. Pine needles and leaf mold and that tinge of something extra that said “powerful male werewolf .” Which is why I was smiling in a tongue-lolling canine fashion… right up until the moment when a huge wolf came barreling out from behind a bush and sent me spinning head over heels to land with a thud against the trunk of a tulip poplar.

Werewolves are pretty rough-and-ready, so it wasn’t the crack on my skull that had me shaking my head in a daze as I scrambled back to my feet. Nope, it was just plain surprise. From the moment when I’d first stepped into my father’s metaphorical shoes, I expected to have to face down power-hungry uncles and cousins in order to maintain my place as alpha of our current pack. But as days stretched into months without a challenge in sight, I’d slowly relaxed my guard. As a result , I now realized that it had been weeks since I’d bothered to peer at the inner wolf of each shifter around me, attempting to seek out insurrections before they had time to spark into flame. And I certainly wasn’t expecting to be attacked here, deep in the heart of pack territory , where there were unlikely to be werewolves from other clans trying to slip past our defenses. So what the heck was going on?

Even as these bewildered thoughts tumbled through my mind, I was spinning on my heel, ruff raised to make me appear larger as I curled my upper lip back into a lupine snarl. But then I paused, even more confused, as I recognized my father’s grizzled muzzle.

Chief Wilder had been the bane of my existence growing up, and he was also the primary reason I’d fled Haven in the first place to eke out a lonely existence in the human world. Yet, since then, my father had manipulated me back into our shared pack, and he’d recently seemed quite willing to let his sole surviving daughter take over leadership of clan Wilder . So what was with this out-of-the-blue attack? Could Crazy Wilder’s nickname have become a self-fulfilling prophecy? Perhaps my father wasn’t simply stuck in wolf form. Maybe now, he was truly cracked.

Pack Princess

An excerpt from ‘Humor at the Speed of Life’ by Ned Hickson

/ Ned's Blog / 19 Comments

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I believe some introductions are in order. And by that, I mean the introduction in my book, which seems like a good place to start. Given that Humor at the Speed of Life is a collection of my newspaper columns, I felt the need to give readers a little background as a jumping off point. Hoping, of course, that they weren’t reading it while perched on the ledge of a building…

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THIS JUST IN…

After 15 years as a humor columnist, it finally hit me. And by that I mean my editor’s stapler. She had been threatening to throw it since 2004, when I first discovered the secret candy drawer she had cleverly labeled: Extra Work for Reporters. For the past nine years she had been warning me, “If you don’t stay out of my candy drawer, I am going to set this thing for ‘stun’ and hurl it at you!”

As I sat there, blurry-eyed and rubbing the back of my head, I came to an important and potentially life-changing realization:

I really need to publish this book now, before she gets a new stapler.

Once my editor replenished her candy stash, there was a good chance another direct hit would result in serious brain damage, ending my career as a journalist and leaving me to write for daytime television. The truth is, readers have been asking me for years to compile a book of columns. As one reader from Gwynette, GA., wrote in, “If you ever come here for a book signing, you better have pastries or something.” Continue reading →

MARRED Excerpt – Sue Coletta

/ Sue Coletta / 32 Comments

ONE

Sunday

1:30 P.M.

I used to believe people were inherently good, if only at their core. I saw the brokenness of the homeless. The, if only he caught a break. . . I respected the overachiever in the football star, hoping for Daddy’s approval even though he knew he’d never get it. I saw the heart of the sinner. The souls of lovers. The shattered dreams of an abandoned child. I saw good in evil. Spirit in the unholy. The complexities of love, marriage, life. Hell, I welcomed the challenge. I had hopes and dreams and affirmations. I did.

And then, that all changed. My views shattered. Or maybe, my eyes finally opened.

That’s what Niko would say. Though now, devastation also fills his eyes. He no longer looks at me as his optimistic wife who loves life. I miss our blissful marriage. I miss our baby. I miss my blindfold. Oh, how I wish I could put it back on. Most of all, I miss. . . me.

Now, I’m just trying to survive. And so, I go through life on autopilot.

***

Clutching a load of laundry I hobbled down the stairs. A white-hot pain shot to my right knee and folded me in half. The basket of clothes tumbled down the stairs– socks, T-shirts, jeans, shorts and Niko’s sheriff’s uniform strewn about the living room floor.

I fell back against the stairs. Twined my arms around the railing and stared at the white lines on my forearms left by the knife. The thick scar on my neck tugged at the skin as I straightened. Even after three long years and hours and hours of counseling, one small reminder– the sight of my scars– made me relive that night over again. I still could not get past what that man did to me.

The phone startled me when it rang. Continue reading →

Excerpt #3 from Summer Magic: Poems of Life & Love

/ Marcia Meara / 6 Comments

It’s fun to have a chance to share a bit of poetry on here. I’ve always loved it, but in today’s world, far too few take the time to enjoy the sound of words, and the shape of a poem, which to me is an integral part of what it says. Even though I’m not great at it, I enjoy writing poetry far too much to ever quit. The last one I shared was about love and hope. This one is about betrayal and loss.

The Last Rose

Late July, and
The day drowses,
Air heavy and still.
Bees moving slowly from
Flower to flower,
In a dance weighed down by heat.
Sleepy hours spent dreaming, longing
For other places, other chances.
Anything better
Than one more day
Spent under this weight,
With movements made slow,
Like easy prey.

He walked out of the dust
And into the garden,
The answer to a prayer.
Wickedly handsome, he came to her with
A smile full of promises she chose to believe.
Take me away, she begged.
Yes, he whispered, of course.
Whatever you want, my beautiful girl.
He gave her dreams of cool, green hills
And kisses that tasted of summer peaches.
Sweet lies on a sweeter tongue,
Promises whispered with hot breath,
Against already burning skin,
And everywhere, the smell of roses
Thick on the summer air.

But winter came,
Bringing brittle wind
Seeping under the sill,
As cold as hungry lies
Told when the sun was warm.
Her heart is a frozen stone
In the center of her breast,
The chance of rescue,
Gone. Forgotten.
A faded rose in a dry vase
Drops one last petal to the floor,
As gray as her life
In this barren room.
Empty promises fled
With the summer sun,
And left nothing behind
But dead dreams and dying hope,
Gasping and huddled
Against the bitter
Cold.

 

Excerpt 2 from THE PRINCE’S MAN, #EpicFantasy by Deborah Jay. #readers #books

/ Deborah Jay / Debby Lush / 5 Comments

Yesterday I shared a snippet of dialogue from the first meeting of the two main characters in THE PRINCE’S MAN.

Today we have an action sequence. To set the scene, Rustam and Lady Risada are fleeing an enemy’s lands, burdened with an unconscious elf they have just rescued from a dungeon.

Enjoy 😀

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Rustam tightened the horses’ girths while Risada filled the canteens. They had just remounted when thundering hooves pounded down the slope behind them and three riders burst into the clearing.

On the edge of his vision Rustam saw Risada drop the bay mare’s reins, draw her dagger and raise a blowpipe to her lips in one fluid set of movements, while he struggled awkwardly to free his sword from the saddle scabbard beneath his left thigh.

Nightstalker pranced eagerly, destroying the tiny moment of concentration he needed to snap his mind into high speed. The elf bounced in front of him, blocking his view. He cursed and curbed the mare sharply. She half reared in protest.

The glint of a blade sliced towards him. Rustam threw himself sideways just as Nightstalker squealed and lashed out with her hind feet. Already off balance, Rustam slithered from the saddle pulling the elf with him, and they crashed heavily to the ground. Continue reading →

Excerpt from Hunter, Riverbend Book 2

/ Marcia Meara / Leave a comment

Those of you who have read Swamp Ghosts and keep asking when Hunter is coming out will be glad to know it’s still on schedule for a late summer, early fall publication date. And just as a special treat for ya, I’m sharing the Prologue here today. This is a Work In Progress, so it will no doubt be tightened and polished a good bit in editing, but here’s the rough draft. Enjoy!

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Dawn, March 20, 2014
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EVERYTHING WAS PAIN. Everything he felt, everything he remembered. Pain, and pain, and pain. His dreams were filled with sounds of agony, screams ricocheting through his head. And blood. Rivers of blood, forming scarlet, coppery-scented puddles that spread across the darkness.

He woke up on his knees, vomiting into the grass. Afterward, he crawled back up onto the park bench, mouth sour, and head throbbing. Shivering, he tried to push the dreams away, but they weren’t ready to let him go.

Something bad, that was the  problem. He had done something bad. Worse than bad. Something unthinkable. He understood that his crime was the root of all his dreams, and if only he could remember, he’d know what he needed to do next. But when he tried to get it straight in his head, the screams would start again, followed by that God-awful, unrelenting pain.

As the day dawned around him, he huddled bent over on the bench, the smell of cheap whiskey on his breath, and sledgehammers pounding inside his skull. He scrubbed at his eyes, as though that would wipe away the images of all that blood, and make the last echoes of those agonized screams disappear. His only clear thought was how to make it all end. Something—someone—needed to die. Fight fire with fire, blood with blood, pain with pain.  Oh, yes. That was the answer.

Shuffling to his unsteady feet, he walked through the morning mist. He had no idea what state he was in, let alone the name of this little town, but he heard the unmistakable whoosh of cars speeding down a highway. In five minutes, he stood by the edge of the southbound lane, holding out his thumb. Instinct told him the direction to travel, and desperation kept him upright, as he waited for the ride that would take him where he needed to go. His plan was simple. If death would bring an end to this pain, then someone was going to die.