Dirty Deeds is now available!

Dear humans,

Hooray! Today is the day! Dirty Deeds can now be purchased at your favorite retailers!

When the going gets tough, the tough get their hands dirty. Join NY Times Bestselling author Faith Hunter, USA Today Bestselling author R.J. Blain, and National Bestselling authors Diana Pharaoh Francis and Devon Monk on a wild romp where the damsels bring the distress and what can go wrong will go wrong.

Venture into a thrilling spinoff tale from the world of Jane Yellowrock, join vacationing gods in what appears to be a quiet, ordinary town, visit a supernatural hotel where the bedbugs could very well eat you, and dive into the zany, deadly world of the Magical Romantic Comedy (with a body count) series.

In this collection of all-new urban fantasy novellas and other stories, no job is too big or too small—if the price is right.

In case you missed it, here is a collection of the various teasers available from this collection!

From Devon Monk’s Sealed with a Tryst:

I parked the Jeep and stared through the rain at my almost-uncle, Crow, who was actually the trickster god Raven. He was waiting just inside the mouth of the tent he’d set up in front of his glassblowing studio. As if he’d been expecting us.

“Ten bucks it’s all stolen.” My youngest sister, Jean, wore a beanie over her blue hair, the bangs across her forehead making her eyes sky bright. She had on a puffy jacket with her badge on it, just like me. Although my badge said Chief Reed and hers just said Officer Reed. 

Crow wiggled his fingers at both of us. His smile was white against his russet-tan skin, and his dark hair hung past his shoulders. He’d braided that hair and added a feather earring to his outfit today. Crow feather, of course.

“I mean, sure,” I said. “At least some of that stuff must be hot. This is Crow we’re talking about. But what I can’t figure out is the whale.”

We both leaned forward to better see out the windshield. 

The January wind buffeted the Jeep hard, rocking it on its springs. Rain hammered down on the metal roof like rocks thrown from the heavens. A storm front was pushing in off the Pacific. Torrential rain would hit by tonight. Then we’d see winds clocking in at sixty miles an hour and gusting to eighty. 

Just another wet, windy, possibly deadly January day in Ordinary, Oregon.

“The whale I understand,” Jean said, as we stared at the tent. “It’s a tent, we’re a beach town. Matchy-match. But why is it that… color?”

“Lurid pink?” I suggested.

She nodded. “Don’t get me wrong, I love me some color, but there’s something about that thing that makes me want to stab it.”

The hot pink whale flapped its obscenely large mouth, flailed its flippers, and flipped its tail like it’d just heard Jean’s threat and was trying to swim away. 

But no matter what Jean or I thought about the thing, there were people moving around inside that ridiculous tent. Shoppers couldn’t resist a bargain, even in this weather.

Crow, still watching us, pointed upward with both hands. 

The whale’s head was topped with a blow hole, and out of that sprayed blood red streamers. An additional banner near the startled whale eye declared: whale of a sale

“Is this an exploding whale thing?” Jean asked. “Because we weren’t the town that blew up that rotting whale in the seventies.”

From Faith Hunter’s Bound into Darkness:

Sometime between books 13 and 14 of the Jane Yellowrock Series…

Liz

Liz Everhart finished the email, tucked her cell into a back pocket of her jeans, ignored the weird buzz of blood-curse taint that still pulled at her flesh, and tried to decide who she wanted to call for backup on this gig. Finding a lost dog sounded easy on the surface, but it could involve hiking up and down mountain ridges, maybe camping overnight, and then hauling a seventy-pound, possibly wounded dog back to civilization. That wasn’t something she wanted to do alone. Liz dialed her twin, Cia, and discovered she was spending the weekend with her boyfriend, so help on that quarter was out. Her other sisters were covering the family business, Seven Sassy Sisters’ Herb Shop and Café. That left asking Jane Yellowrock, who she didn’t particularly like, and who was way too busy being some big hoo-ha in the vampire world. Or she could ask the man who had been avoiding her for weeks. Yeah. Him. She thought about being rejected again. Or, not so much rejected, as suddenly, inexplicably ignored.

Staring out over the vineyard, watching her older sister, Molly, work, she remembered the various comments he’d made a month ago, ones that suggested he was now totally disinterested. She didn’t know what had happened, except that he’d been in some pretty dangerous situations protecting Jane Yellowrock. Maybe he really thought the danger to “civilians,” as he called people who were not part of Yellowrock’s vampire-human-witch clan was too great for her to handle.

Come to think of it, his apparent disinterest had come almost immediately after her bout with viral pneumonia. He’d been there for her while she recuperated, then he’d pulled back. Son of a witch! That was it. Because she’d nearly died, he thought she couldn’t keep up with the danger. If she hadn’t caught him looking at her a couple of times, she would have believed he’d changed his mind about them being together and become oblivious to her. He thought she was weak which might be worse. Stupid man.

Down the hill, Molly stretched hard and blew out. She’d been hired to talk to the vines to help them grow. Molly was an earth witch and, when she talked to plants, she actively pushed her earth magic into the soil, into the roots, encouraging them to good health, to seek out proper nutrients. She gave them a boost of life. Liz wasn’t an earth witch like Molly, but even she could tell the land here was well cared for, happy, and productive, in part due to Molly “talking to the vines.” Yellowrock and her consort, George Dumas, should have a good crop come harvest time. Aaaand she was wasting time.

Liz trudged back up the terraced incline to the big inn where Yellowrock Clan wine label originated, and which housed the Yellowrock Clan itself: a mixed para clan that did crazy stuff trying to keep the human versus para war from erupting here like it had in other parts of the world. Politics. Liz hated politics. Wasn’t real fond of vamps. But Yellowrock’s adopted clan-brother, Eli Younger, the man who had been avoiding her, lived here. That ornery man made it worth the trip from Asheville.

It wasn’t a hard climb, but Liz was huffing by the time she got to the house. It was early fall and the humidity, even in the hills above Asheville, was in at eighty percent with temps near ninety. And while Liz’s lungs were better, thanks to witch healing, they were permanently damaged from the trauma that resulted when her now-deceased elder sister Evangelina dropped a boulder on her in a magical fight over a demon. She had nearly died. Her other sisters had saved her from instant death. Yellowrock had made sure she had vamp blood to sip to speed the healing. But even with continued healing blood and healing workings, along with her niece’s prayers, trauma was trauma.

From Diana Pharaoh Francis’s The Pixie Job:

The thing about taking a vacation is that you always feel guilty that you aren’t being productive, or someone wants you to do something you don’t want to do. Case in point: the ghost elf sitting on the lounge opposite giving Mal the fish-eye stare because she refused to go train. 

“I told you. I’m on vacation. I promised Law, and the other ghosts, and So’la. I’m not supposed to do anything but relax for an entire month.” 

Mal reached for her mimosa and sipped it deliberately. She wasn’t generally a drinker, especially in the morning, but Edna, another of her ghost companions, had encouraged her to try it out. She could have done without the champagne in the orange juice but whatever. She was on vacation, and apparently this is what people did on vacation. She wouldn’t know. She’d never actually taken one before. 

Merrow’s lips twisted downward. She looked entirely out of place. Well, generally ghosts did look out of place among the living, especially since generally the living made sure they were exterminated like vermin. Mal used to be one of those exterminators until she couldn’t stomach it anymore. Now she had her own family—collection? cult? hangers on? —of ghosts. 

She had eighteen of them, now that Merrow had joined. They fed off her magical energy, which they needed to survive. Which was sort of an oxymoron but whatever. 

Anyhow, Merrow had been an elf. A militant one, part of an elite fighting force. She’d been betrayed by her own and killed, then joined Mal in order to get revenge. She’d achieved that and Mal thought maybe she’d have crossed over in whatever way elves do, but she’d stayed. 

Merrow was bored. 

Law, Mal’s boyfriend and the blood-bound security witch of Effrayant—where Mal was vacationing, just as she’d promised after her most recent near-death experience—had arranged charging stations for the ghosts so they could go anywhere and find sustenance. This was not an unselfish act. He’d been motivated by a desire for privacy with Mal, but the ghosts were grateful. 

Most of them.

From R.J. Blain’s Doggone Mess:

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.

• Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/Dirty-Deeds-Urban-Fantasy-Collection-ebook/dp/B083TCG6S3/
• Barnes & Noble: https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/dirty-deeds-rj-blain/1136016469?ean=2940163974443
• Apple Books: https://books.apple.com/us/book/dirty-deeds/id1494802029
• Kobo: https://www.kobo.com/us/en/ebook/dirty-deeds-44

Paperbacks:

• Mass market paperback (unsigned) on Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/Dirty-Deeds-R-J-Blain/dp/1649640099/
• Trade paperback (unsigned) on Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/Dirty-Deeds-R-J-Blain/dp/1649640102/
• Barnes & Noble Mass Market Paperback (Unsigned): https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/dirty-deeds-rj-blain/1136016469?ean=9781649640093
• Barnes & Noble Trade Paperback (Unsigned): https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/dirty-deeds-rj-blain/1136016469?ean=9781649640109

Book Faire update: the female needs a few days to get Wild Wolf finalized and finish some critical, time-sensitive stuff. Book Faire will resume as soon as she has crossed the finish line. Thank you for your understanding!