Friday, May 5, 2017
Thursday, May 4, 2017
Snippet Time! Check out #02 from Shade of Honor! Coming soon!
All that Zhanna could
hear in the stunned silence was the dripping of water. Water dripping
everywhere. Plunk, plunk, plunk. Her hair was plastered to her face, and she reached up a hand to clear her vision. The cavern was now decorated
with dripping water, fragments of vegetation, and one very pissed off familiar.
<<Oh, oh! This is
going to be bad,>> she thought to herself.
The usually elegant
Russian Blue cat looked like a skinny black drowned rat. Her eyes seem to have doubled in size, glaring beams of green flame at the sodden witch. Slowly, ever so slowly, the cat
raised first one front paw and shook it, and then the other. A sharp ripping
sound started to emanate from its chest,
and the familiar appeared to grow in size.
A nimbus of green flame had
surrounded the form of the feline before
a swirl of invisible wind encircled it. Instead of a 15 pound, normal-looking cat, the creature that stretched
and arched its back before deliberately pacing over toward Zhanna was the size
of a cat seen last on the Earth a
millennium before.
If sabertooth tigers had
come in black, this is what they would’ve looked like. Dascha had totally
transformed into her alternate shape. Her
dense coat had a subtle striping to it with blue, black, and dark gray forming
stripes that ran along the body. Easily
measuring 12 feet from her nose to the end of her tail, Dascha’s head now came up to Zhanna’s shoulder. What had been a
very upset small cat now was a whole lot more infuriated feline.
At last, Dascha found her
voice, producing a thundering roar in Zhanna’s head and an earsplitting caterwaul
that echoed around the cavern.
<<What on earth
were you thinking of? That was not the spell that you were going to
try!>>
<<I just wanted to
see if it would work. It seemed like it would be a logical thing to do after
the spells we been practicing all morning.>>
<<If your goal was
to translocate a large body of water up onto that walls, rip vegetation apart,
and assaulted me with water, the spell worked. Otherwise, I would say it was
some sort of epic failure.>>
<<I am truly sorry,
Dascha. I knew I was tired and just wanted to try one more thing.>>
The cat looked around the
cavern, noting broken stalactites, translocated fish that were gasping their
last breath, and the continued dripping of water. Pinning her green-eyed gaze on
her witch, the familiar summed up her opinion succinctly, <<I would say
that this one counts as a failure.>>
Softening both her mental
tone and audible snarling, the familiar
continued,<<Let’s go home, Zhanna. You’re tired,
and we will continue another day. After all, such learning is hard to do by yourself.>>
May the Fourth Be with you. Star Wars Day!
Fergus says May the Fourth be with you!
Don't forget about the Revenge of the Fifth!
Sunday, April 30, 2017
Thursday, April 27, 2017
Check out these authors! New from the Smarter Artists Summit in Austin, Tx
This ain’t your grandma’s cozy mystery!
Retired librarian Nancy Moon never expected a tiger to jump on the hood of her car, nor did she expect to meet a dying witch in an alleyway. But when this widow agrees to fulfill the expiring woman's last wish, she must face her fears and venture into a world she knows nothing about.
As Nancy delves deeper into a world of magic, mayhem, and monsters, she finds herself caught between saving herself and those she cares about.
A Moonlit Task is an urban fantasy mystery novel with an epic plot set in a world of hidden magic and paranormal creatures. It is the first book in the End Gate Series by Tom Hansen. Readers of Patricia Briggs, Jim Butcher, and those who want an older protagonist in their fantasy will love this new twist on a familiar tale.
Buy this book if you are tired of teenagers always saving the world!
Monday, April 24, 2017
Snippet Time! Check out the #01 the First Snippet from Shade of Honor!
The desolation was complete. It looked like God had reached out a hand and flattened the entire village. Building walls were toppled, roofs were broken, and the normal structure of their daily village life had been totally destroyed. It would’ve been impossible to determine from the current scene that only a short number of hours before this it been a village of over 4000 people. One teaming with the normal life of a small village.
Zhanna stood with her hands balled into fists, staring around her. The sick feeling in her stomach was overwhelming. She didn’t know whether to fall to her knees, crying torrents of tears or to scream her rage to the heavens. Stuck between grief and anger, she was frozen.
How could have come to this? The muted sound of soft sobbing filled her ears, and she turned to her left. Curled protectively around two small children, an older woman in the traditional head covering, or babushka, stared blankly at what remained of her home. It was Baba Marta. Zhanna knew that probably meant that the two crying children were Gregor and Anna, but she couldn’t see for sure. The sound of the children’s soft, frightened sobs told her both that they were alive and kicked off an unconscionable rage. How could it have come to this?
Zhanna had seen other places where disasters had happened. There was always a bustle of people trying to rescue and repair. Men rushing around, caring stretchers, comforting their families. But all that she could hear and all that she could see was a frozen aftermath of a horrible disaster. There was no bustle, no rescue. No men. There was the main problem. There were no men in the village right now. They were all out on contract. Without the men’s mercenary work, there would be no food, no shelter. The entire village was dependent on having the best, and the brightest spend huge amounts of time away from their families.
Her dark thoughts were rudely interrupted. <<I suppose you just going to stand there and look like a thundercloud waiting to mess up a nice day,>> sniped through her thoughts.
She looked down into the brilliant eyes of her cat, her familiar. Dascha stared back at Zhanna with a wicked glint in her eye. The cat was gorgeous. The deepest gray coloring and the black undertone of the fur seem to glow in the sunlight. Almost too dark for a Russian Blue, Dasha looked more like a Russian Black. Looking at her cat, Zhanna felt the blast of astonishment that occurred whenever she thought of how she had ended up with such a beautiful, powerful, impressive familiar. She must’ve stared too long at the cat because the next thing she knew her ankle was pricked by a set of very sharp claws.
<<Stop staring at me! Aren’t you going to do something useful?>>
<<I was planning on it if you’d stop drawing my blood!>>
<<Well, think faster because standing here until you grow roots isn’t going to help the people that are hurting or bleeding. So, get your act together, girl, and let’s do something useful.>>
Zhanna drew a deep breath and straightened her spine. Forcing a calm look unto her face, the young woman walked toward the older one who was still clutching the crying children, calling out as she walked, “Just a moment, let’s see how you’re doing…”
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