Dear humans,
Life is happening in the Blain household. The female is hopeful change may come sooner than later. The male proposed potentially moving. The female was like please? Then the male mentioned having to talk to work, and the female went from hopeful to sad. But… the female is hopeful the male’s work will be cooperative. But there are no guarantees.
The female is making good progress on Wild Wolf. It is not done yet. She will be riding the deadline hard. Again. We apologize for any missed typos. We are doing our best, but our best is sometimes not quite good enough. (We have a typo list for Murder Mittens. It’s five or ten corrections out of a 100k book, so that’s fine… but they need to be done. She needs to finish Wild Wolf first. But it’ll get done.)
So, we thank you for your patience regarding the few extra typos that were discovered in Murder Mittens. (She did her best, but she’s really tired.)
Dirty Deeds is the next release, and it includes a Magical Romantic Comedy (with a body count) in it. It includes a story (or two) by Faith Hunter, R.J. Blain, Diana Pharaoh Francis, and Devon Monk. The female’s is entitled Doggone Mess, and here’s the opening:
After a long week of work, I couldn’t really blame anyone for grabbing fast food on the way home, but did everyone in Long Island have to visit my specific branch of McDonald’s? From vanilla humans, lycanthropes, practitioners, and centaurs, to devils, demons, and even an angel, everybody wanted a hit, and they wanted me to give it to them.
I questioned the angel. How could they eat without a head? Did they eat? Why did an angel want nuggets? Why did everyone want nuggets today?
While all the lines were busy, mine had twice as many people, and I doubted I’d survive to the end of my shift in an hour.
I considered asking some divine for help, but I opted against the idea. With my luck, the devil would join the mayhem and give me one hell of an order.
The nuggets held the place as the day’s reigning champion of sales, with the smart people ordering twenty, as it was approximately fifty cents more expensive than ordering ten. Burgers took the second spot of the day, and the underdog salad came in a close third, resulting in general mayhem in the back, as we hadn’t prepared for a salad bender.
Oddly, the lycanthropes led the charge on the unexpected salad bender. Had someone slipped pixie dust into our dressing when I hadn’t been looking? While filling an insane order consisting of a hundred and sixty nuggets, ten fries, and enough soda to float a boat, I checked one of the labels to make sure.
Nope, no pixie dust.
I could’ve used a hit of pixie dust, but for some damned reason, the CDC got cranky when those infected with a contagious life-altering disease became snuggle fiends. My driver’s license specifically barred me from ingesting any pixie dust without a prescription, the cruelest of blows in my life outside of my accidental infection with lycanthropy. Pixie dust turned me into a snuggle fiend out on a mission to love everyone, making me a high infection risk.
They would consider removing the flag after I mated, as they believed I would become a snuggle fiend with my mate, something they viewed to be acceptable.
I hated the CDC, especially as my virus agreed with their idea. I bet my terrorist virus just wanted me to settle down and used pixie dust to its advantage, although I’d resisted its wicked ways thus far.
Damn it, I needed a vacation. I also needed more than three days off before my next chain of thirteen days of twelve hours a pop. If I worked fourteen days in a row without a break, the labor board might get upset. I should have complained about the low pay and long hours, but I needed the money to pay my rent. I kept smiling, bagged the boxes of nuggets, triple counted boxes to make sure I wouldn’t have a cranky lycanthrope storming back complaining he’d been shorted, and went about my work with the same general efficiency and life as the average robot programmed to be the perfect public servant.
No matter what, I couldn’t afford to join the ranks of the unemployed. As a confirmed lycanthrope, jobs came few and far between, and I didn’t have a pack.
Single lycanthrope women in packs didn’t stay single for long, and I refused to have anything to do with the local packs, especially since I had no idea which one of the mangy bastards had infected me in the first place—or if I’d been the victim of an unidentified hot spot.
Considering how I’d spent a long time in the hospital thanks to some asshole, I’d been infected by a mangy bastard. Judging from my virus’s reaction to some men, she hated anyone who resembled the asshole who’d stolen my humanity almost as much as I did.
The CDC wanted to do tests to determine if I had a known strain, but I’d refused. The way I figured, I was better off not knowing.
My virus and I agreed on little, but it disliked that I hadn’t been a willing victim with a male on hand to cater to my every need. My virus wanted me to find someone—anyone—to scratch my various itches, and I considered myself lucky that wild part of me didn’t push too hard.
I figured the CDC’s perfume helped with that.
As the restaurant’s token wolf, present to serve those who either were willing to risk the virus to get their food faster or were also confirmed lycanthropes, I’d stay hired as long as I kept my work performance up and didn’t complain I only got three days off every thirteen or so days.
According to my nose, only a few in my line were infected, and to my disgust, right before I was scheduled to escape, Wayne Barnes proved to be one of them. Thanks to my wolfsbane perfume, a gift from the CDC to keep my status as an unmated lycanthrope female hidden, most customers assumed I was the sacrificial lamb chosen by the managers to deal with the cranky lycanthropes, using the perfume to deter customers. As far as Wayne was concerned, I was the annoying holdout in what would one day be his apartment complex, refusing to move out to make it so he could purchase the building.
I bet the bastard had come to my workplace to make yet another offer to get me to move.
I worked through the orders until it was his turn, and bracing for the worst, I went through the ceremonial greeting and asked for his order.
“Busy night, Joyce,” he commented, regarding the menu as though he hadn’t just spent twenty minutes waiting for his turn. “I can’t decide, so pick your favorites, give me six orders worth of it, and surprise me for the drinks. It’s to go.”
For fuck’s sake. One of these days, he’d really kill me, but I went to work tapping in my dream order, which involved two different salads, a Big Mac, six chocolate chip cookies, two regular cheeseburgers, three grilled chicken sandwiches, and twenty nuggets.
Dirty Deeds is available in e-book format at the following vendors: Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Apple Books, and Kobo.
Dirty Deeds is available in two different paperback sizes.
Trade (6×9): $15.99. Amazon, Barnes & Noble
Mass Market (4.25×7) (This is the normal size of the female’s paperbacks): Amazon, Barnes & Noble
While Doggone Mess will be expanded a lot in a full-length novel, the first arc is completed, so if you view it as ‘the first book in a series’ except it’ll be one book when done, you’ll be okay, humans. We promise. (In short, there is a bigger story to come, and you have an idea what that story is about, but things have happened in the first arc of the story!)
We really like Doggone Mess. It’s fun. And punny. But fun. You got cats with Murder Mittens, so now you get goggies!
And yes, more bounty hunters, but you’ll be pleased to know that the bounty huntress in Doggone Mess isn’t really the killing kind, not like our adorable Murder Mittens.
But, it should be an exceptionally fun start to the year!
Anyway, onto the book faire. There are two today because the female has so much work left to do. We’ll be back tomorrow with more books. And then the December 2020 Book Faire will transform into the January 2021 Book Faire, for we will not be done tomorrow.
We hope you all have had a wonderful holidays. Stay safe, and please stay healthy.
Gift of Ashes by Amir Lane (Urban Fantasy)
Purchase Link: Amazon (Kindle Unlimited)
Price: $0.99
Age Rating: N/A
Note(s) from the Publisher: Contains graphic violence. May contain spoilers for Gift of Shadows.
Death is no escape from the grasp of a malevolent necromancer.
Five hundred years ago, Angelo was burned at the stake and reborn as a phoenix. That’s when his true suffering began. For more than a century, he has born the brand of necromancer Rutherford Bromley. Bound by magical ties even death can’t escape, Angelo is a slave to the mad man’s vile whims. It falls to him to find victims Bromley can harvest organs from. If he fails, he pays with his own flesh.
Curse worker Wes is the first person to recognize the necromancer’s brand for what it is. Desperate to be free, Angelo eagerly partners with Wes in search of a spell that will kill Bromley once and for all.
But Bromley anticipates their attack, and Angelo’s chance at escape goes up in flames. Left smoldering in his hatred, Angelo now seeks more than freedom.
He longs for fiery revenge and vows to claim it, no matter the cost.
Our Thoughts: We are biased, as Amir is the honorary grandmonster of the female, and as such, the grandmonster should be showered with all of the love and appreciation. That sad, we love the text work on this cover because it’s just really nicely done.
The ash/ember critter on the cover, however, is seriously creepy, and we’re going to go hide under the blankets now.
The Enchanted Crossroads by Dora Blume (Paranormal Romance)
Purchase Link: Amazon (Kindle Unlimited)
Price: Free (We do not know how long this will remain free.)
Age Rating: 18+
Note(s) from the Publisher: Contains sexy funtimes!
A Vengeful God. An army of evil warlocks. An inexperienced witch, the world’s only hope…
Kaira’s life was going according to plan until the death of her mother revealed a world-shattering secret. She was a witch.
To save the world, she’s going to have to find the sisters she didn’t know existed with powers she doesn’t know how to use.
Leif, the driven coven leader, rescues her from the warlocks trying to kill her. Their spark is instant. He’ll teach her how to be a witch if they don’t let their romance get in the way.
Armed with her new skills, aided by her love interest Leif, Kaira embarks on a quest to find her siblings and save the world!
Our Thoughts: We are torn on this one, humans. On one hand, the basic idea of this book intrigues the female. On the other, she’s a tiny bit tired of save the world tropes, probably because it’s hard enough to cope with ‘get out of bed, make coffee, don’t cry because apartment is too small for an office.’ The thought of saving the world right now is a bit much. Now… if the character was out to burn the world… maybe.
Crossing fingers in the hope that the male’s work masters give their blessing!
Doggone Mess sounds like fum. Be well and fingers crossed for a potential happy move for you guys ( and cats).