New Audiobook and a Short Story Challenge!

Grave Affairs by Lilith Daniels is officially in the Patreon store for purchase. There is a very strange issue with Chapter 24. It works for everyone except ACX, who claims there is an error… but nobody can figure out what the error is, not even ACX. As such, I included the original chapter 24 in the main zip file and a backup chapter 24 just in case.

We are trying to figure out what is “wrong” with the file so, when I get the audiobook cover and a few weeks goes by, it can be uploaded to audible. (ACX is the file manager/system used to upload books to audible.)

Expect the audiobook to be pushed to vendors on March 10, 2025. (If you want the book earlier, please purchase from Patreon; Patreon pays the vast majority of audiobook production fees for me, so it’s a critical part of the audiobook process at this point.)

Note: when I say pushed to vendors, that is when I give them approval to sell; it can take anywhere from 24 hours to three weeks for the vendors to put the book up for sale.

Happy listening!

Now, onto the short story challenge.

One of my beloved friends, Faith Hunter, slid into my messages the other day and decided to smack me with a gauntlet. As I am not one to back down from being smacked with a gauntlet, we are now engaging in a short story battle royale.

I challenged her to write a story about someone with fire magic.

She challenged me to write a story about cupcakes and dragons.

If you wish to follow our short story battle royale, please follow our blogs (or her newsletter). Imma gonna be smacking her around with the gauntlet next, and I’m going to give her a bit more of a challenge next time. (She got off lightly this time.)

To follow my blog, scroll to the bottom of this page and submit your email address; this will send you a copy of my blog posts to your email.

To join Faith’s newsletter, please click here.

Faith’s website can be found here, and if you’re not big on newsletters, she’ll be posting her stories to her site a day or two after she posts to her newsletter. (I will be attempting to post links directly to the challenges in future blogs for those who have missed it.)

Faith is the author of several fabulous series. They’re dark and edgy urban fantasies and sci-fis. I started with Skinwalker (Jane Yellowrock #1), and she graciously gave me a snippet to share with you all:

I wheeled my bike down Decatur Street and eased deeper into the French Quarter, the bike’s engine purring. My shotgun, a Benelli M4 Super 90, was slung over my back and loaded for vamp with hand-packed silver-fléchette rounds. I carried a selection of silver crosses in my belt, hidden under my leather jacket, and stakes, secured in loops at my jeans-clad thighs. The saddlebags on my bike were filled with my meager travel belongings—clothes in one side, tools of the trade in the other. As a vamp killer for hire, I travel light.

I’d need to put the vamp-hunting tools out of sight for my interview. My hostess might be offended. Not a good thing when said hostess held my next paycheck in her hands and possessed a set of fangs of her own.

A guy, a good-looking Joe standing in a doorway, turned his head to follow my progress as I motored past. He wore leather boots, a jacket, and jeans, like me, though his dark hair was short and mine was down to my hips when not braided out of the way, tight to my head, for fighting. A Kawasaki motorbike leaned on a stand nearby. I didn’t like his interest, but he didn’t prick my predatory or territorial instincts. 

I maneuvered the bike down St. Louis and then onto Dauphine, weaving between nervous-looking shop workers heading home for the evening and a few early revelers out for fun. I spotted the address in the fading light. Katie’s Ladies was the oldest continually operating whorehouse in the Quarter, in business since 1845, though at various locations, depending on hurricane, flood, the price of rents, and the agreeable nature of local law and its enforcement officers. I parked, set the kickstand, and unwound my long legs from the hog.

Now… here is my answer to Faith’s challenge!

Cupcake and Dragon Story (I know, it’s the BEST title ever.)

“What do you mean there are no cupcakes?” Somehow, I kept my voice calm, twinged with the faintest trace of disbelief, grateful I’d managed to withhold my question until outside so that no one would feel obligated to answer me.

I had been to three grocery store, six bakeries, and several corner stores, and the story was the same: there were no cupcakes.

At the first grocery store, I had accepted my misfortune with some dismay but acceptance that I could go to the one down the street. When that one failed to have a single cupcake anywhere, not even in boxed format, I’d become a little worried.

At least I’d gotten some answers at the bakeries.

A hungry red dragon, a male as far as the baker could tell, had purchased then thirty minutes before my arrival.

As a proud representative of the blue dragon community, I could wipe out an entire city of cupcakes in an hour flat. However, my section of Seattle, which I’d claimed as my territory ten years ago, did not have any red dragons in it—or any other dragons at all.

The last time a dragon had tried to move in, he’d laughed at my name. Sure, Buttercup wasn’t exactly an intimidating name for a dragon, but I liked my name, and I wasn’t going to have some upstart making fun of my name.

It didn’t help I disliked sharing. I was a dragon, after all.

My turf was mine, and it had three grocery stores, six bakeries, and ten corner stores, and I expected any visiting dragon to offer me at least a cupcake—or a five dollar bill so I might buy a cupcake—in order to do anything in my territory. I even had imbued the entire area with my edict: the cost of passage in my turf was a single cupcake or a five dollar bill.

As far as passage fees went, mine was reasonable. The dragon next door, a nasty olive green blight, charged a hundred dollar fee per every store visited.

As I wished to become a wealthy dragon with a large territory, I avoided situations where I needed to pay fees to others, arranging it so I had a ready supply of cupcakes or the money to purchase them.

My grocery stores attracted dragons from across the entirety of Seattle, and they always paid before shopping.

The interloper would pay, and if he had a single scrap of common sense, he’d be paying me with a cupcake.

My magic did not whisper of an offering waiting for me. When someone left a cupcake on my doorstep, a chiming song reverberated through me, bringing with it a sense of the dragon wise enough to pay my fee.

The audacity of the red dragon daring to infiltrate my turf and bereave me of my favorite treat goaded me into transforming, and as I wanted my turf to remain standing, I controlled my size, large enough to loom over any dog but still capable of fitting on the sidewalk while I hunted for my quarry.

At the minimum, I would give the red dragon a bite to the rump to remind him of why he should respect my turf.

I took to the air and began the search around my turf, beginning with the corner stores I hadn’t visited yet.

I found him along the edge of my territory, waddling out while burdened with more than a few bags tied off around his serpentine neck. I recognized a few as from my bakeries and grocery stores. Rather than land and start taking swipes at him, I landed on a nearby roof and remained quiet, observing him.

With his head held high, he went down the street, reminding me of a proud horse wanting everyone to behold his beauty. The bags turned the situation into a sad comedy more than anything else.

Absolutely puzzled over what the red dragon sought to do, I glided from rooftop to rooftop while he trotted into the heart of my domain. Judging from the path he took, he obeyed my magic, accepting the directions to my domain.

Torn between disbelief and amusement, I tailed him.

Had the red bought every single cupcake in my turf to pay my fee?

I thought I’d been specific in my edict: I charged one cupcake or a five dollar bill.

Idiot red dragon.

Sure enough, he went to my home, went up the steps to my door, and he sat down, settling in to wait.

I supposed if the red dragon wanted an audience, buying my turf out of cupcakes and bringing them over was a good way to go about it. As such, I redacted my belief of his idiocy—at least for long enough to see what he was about.

As he showed up as a dragon, I would as well, but I would adopt my appropriate size, which filled up the entirety of my yard and most of the street, which would inconvenience everyone until I decided to move. As I liked those living within my turf for the most part, I would take my payment, give him five minutes to explain himself, and send him on his way before eating every last one of the cupcakes.

I waited for the traffic to ease before swooping down, landing, and transforming, taking care to avoid the parked cars, mine included. Then I loomed over my doorstep, staring down at my guest. “Can I help you?” I rumbled.

He turned, focused on my nearest taloned hand, and spent a rather entertaining few minutes looking up, and up, and up, until he located my muzzle.

As I was my father’s daughter, I revealed my sparkling white teeth, which I polished once a week to maintain my pristine gaping maw.

While some dragons preferred using the risk of infection as part of their scare tactics, tI wanted my victims to understand their death would be brutal and beautiful.

The little male blinked. “Are you Buttercup?”

“I am.”

With admirable care and finesse, he untied one of the bags from his neck, which was from the smallest of the three bakeries, and held it up. “I did not have a five dollar bill, so I bought you cupcakes.”

I reached out, seized the bag with the tips of two talons, and replied, “Thank you for your tribute. You only had to purchase one cupcake.”

The red dragon bobbed his head. “That is what everyone said, but my mother told me if I were to enter a female dragon’s home, if I wished to survive the experience, I should bring treats. If I want a treat myself, then I need to bring sufficient to feed the female and hope for leftovers.”

Overall, his mother had given him excellent advice. I transformed, aware I wore tattered jeans and a blouse due to be retired as I hated getting new clothes filthy while working. I stepped over him, opened my front door, and stepped inside. “Come on in, then. Are you young or nervous because someone told you something about me?”

“I am not young, and I would consider myself as mildly concerned for my safety.”

Interesting. I guided him to my kitchen, pulled out a chair for him, and washed my hands before sitting down, freeing my treats from the bag, discovering six chocolate cupcakes in the box. I took one and placed the other in front of his seat. “What has you mildly concerned?”

“I made the mistake of entering your father’s territory, and while I paid the fee, he made an additional demand.”

That old bastard of a treacherous wyrm would die. “First born child or unholy matrimony?”

The little red unloaded all the bags from his neck before hopping onto the chair and sitting. “I’m afraid he has insisted on unholy matrimony.”

I did the math. Upon entering my territory, he had purchased every cupcake he could find, knowing that providing sweets might save him from my wrath. As he was mildly concerned, he was old enough to meet my father’s approval, which put my guest between five to twenty-five years older than me.

My father had shitty opinions at times.

“Did you at least escape their territory before running into my mother?”

He shook his head.

“I hope you have learned from this.”

“Immediately turn around if the territory belongs to a mated pair of dragons with dual requirements to enter, and the requirements may involve favors or demands that cannot be refused,” he replied. “As such, My name is Darryl, and I have a choice to enter into unholy matrimony with you or stain my scales blue for a period of a hundred years.” He regarded his side, and I discovered he had a pair of mobile ears behind his horns, which he turned back. “After being blue for a hundred years, I would be plucked once a year until I opted to do the right thing and enter into unholy matrimony. Your mother’s words.”

Poor Darryl. Having met my parents, the mean old wyrms they were, I could understand how he’d cave to their demands.

A proud dragon hated anyone messing with their scales.

“What did you do to deserve this?” I blurted, taking off the wrapper from my cupcake and taking a bite, at a complete loss of why my parents would inflict so much misery against a lowly little red.

“My father is Oscar the Tyrant.”

Ah. I’d heard that the undisputed ruler of the entire east coast had more children than sense; I’d given up tracking them after the first six. Unfortunately for Darryl, his father wouldn’t miss him, not with at least twenty other kids around and causing trouble. I gave him three more cupcakes. “Did they specify a date for unholy matrimony?”

“No.”

“Then it isn’t a problem. We are dragons, and dragons do not rush into anything, but to spare you from having blue scales and being plucked, I will deem you a consideration for unholy matrimony. As long as you are not under consideration for unholy matrimony with any other dragon or human, the conditions for the favor are met. Just don’t piss me off. The first thing my daddy taught me as a hatchling was how to perform the Nutcracker Suite.”

Darryl winced. “Message received. So that’s it? I can eat my cupcakes and go?”

“You can, and if you hear anything on the news about a pair of old blue wyrms perishing, don’t worry about it. It’s just me eradicating those blights from existence. You can even make use of the guest bedroom for the night if you’d like. You’ve certainly brought enough cupcakes to feed us both. Unless you’re good at cooking, you’re getting spaghetti. The sauce is coming from a jar, the pasta isn’t from a brand name, and the meatballs will be coming from a bag I have in the freezer.”

“I’m good at cooking, but I like that kind of spaghetti. Why are you not trying to peel my meat from my bones? That’s what your mother said would happen to me, thus the mild concerned.”

What a brave but foolish red dragon.

“Revenge is a dish served after it has time to mature, much like a fine wine or Scotch. As such, I’m going to send a ransom letter to your father and blame my parents. That way, you get to escape and I might get paid while my parents pay for my transgressions. And you mark my words, Darryl, my parents will pay for this.”

“I am no longer mildly concerned. Now I am severely concerned. My father is going to surely try to kill someone over this, and the someone might be me.”

“I’m sure you’ll be fine. He hasn’t killed any of his offspring yet.”

“I do not wish to be the first.”

“I recommend you learn to run and fly faster than he does. It might help.” I smiled, devoured my cupcake, and got up. “I wish you the best of luck. You’re going to need it.”