Spotlight & Excerpt: Dawn of a Demon + Giveaway

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Dawn of a Demon

Nightfly Book 1

by Christine Schulz

Genre: New Adult Urban Fantasy

 

The fight to save my city and everyone in it has only just begun. It’s time to sharpen the cat claws and unleash the spider fangs because this half shifter always catches her prey.

When a toxic memory-warping drug starts breaking the minds of everyone in the city, it becomes my mission as a military soldier to hunt down the criminal mastermind responsible before its deadly magic claims any more lives. But when the target I’m pursuing attacks my father and I watch helplessly as a good friend perishes before my eyes, things get personal. Now, I’ll bend every rule to bring down the savage who dragged my family and friends into this mess.

Unfortunately, saving the city and the people I care about comes at a cost. When I discover the true reason this magic has infested my home, I’m forced to make an impossible choice: do I protect the people I love or put an end to this catastrophe once and for all to stop more minds from being destroyed ever again?

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dawnofademon - excerpt“I think that’s our cue.” Ryker nodded to me, and we both darted over to Kasra, diving into the chaos.

Rushing past our target, I activated my own magic to get a whiff of Davian’s oozing from his body. I violently rubbed my nose, the smell of salty air burning past my nostrils. Water magic. Glad I didn’t take Ryker up on his bet.

The tip of my boot nudged something soft on the floor. I looked down to see the drunk, who had fallen flat on his back. His poor balance made it look like he was trying to stand up on a patch of black ice, his flailing arms knocking over everything in his way.

“I’ll get you for this!” The incoherent words babbling out of his mouth took me a moment to decipher.

“Doubt it.” I kicked him over with my boot, and he was officially down for the count.

When I returned my gaze to the room, half the bar had joined in on the fight, the noise intensifying to eardrum-rupturing levels. The three other men who had been sitting at the table with Kasra circled her, taking turns with their knives and magic, trying to take her down. She was ducking and dodging their attacks, smacking the men around with her bare hands. One of them leaned over to snatch a pair of kitchen shears from behind the bar and sent it flying toward her face. She stepped to the side, narrowly avoiding it, but the blades now had another target.

“Watch out!” I dove at a frightened bartender hustling toward the front door, who was about to be on the receiving end of the sharp object embedding itself into the back of her head. As I crashed into her, the pointed tip pierced me in the arm, ripping open my skin before clattering to the floor. I seethed at the burning pain that radiated from the shallow puncture wound, warm blood soaking into my plaid button-down.

“You’re welcome,” I insinuated, although I was certain she was too in shock to hear my words. The woman froze, let out a high-pitched shriek, then ran out of the bar and never looked back.

Ryker was battling his way through some angry patrons, using his magic to stab his knife through expertly placed portals and trying to prevent an angry mob from reaching Kasra. Glasses shattered across faces. Plates were thrown like deadly frisbees. Tables overturned and chairs flew across the room.

An overly confident man came charging at me with a fork, so I picked up the scissors from the floor and chucked them at him. Missing my mark, sharpened cat claws shot out of my fingertips. I lunged in his direction, my body contorting as he swung his fist at my jaw. As I twisted around him, my claws cleanly sliced four gashes up his forearm. The man’s eyes bulged open and he took a step back. The once fearless man dropped his utensil and scampered off in a different direction.

I winced as something heavy shattered against the back of my head. Whipping around, my foot crunched on broken glass from a liquor bottle. I skewered my next target with an unflinching stare and ripped a blue bullet from my belt.

“Dormeo!”

Sleep powder exploded across his chest, and the man dropped to the ground with a thud, eyes rolling to the back of his head.

“Show women some respect,” I muttered to the unconscious man as I defied my own statement by grabbing a wooden chair and chucking it at a husky woman about to pounce on Ryker. Just beyond her, a man with dark-rimmed eyes and washed out skin concealed himself with a trench coat while he pushed through the rowdy crowd.

“Ryker!” I cried, pointing at Davian trying to make a run for it.

“Go get him!” Kasra insisted as she punched a pot-bellied hooligan in the gut.

She still hadn’t activated her magic. “I’ve got this.”

Fighting a brief curiosity to watch Kasra in heels and a skin-tight skirt take down a horde of savage men, Ryker and I took off, chasing after Davian as he left through the hallway and out the back door in the kitchen.


Christine is a pug loving foodie who has an unhealthy obsession with unicorns, and you’ll definitely see bits of that shine through in her stories. As a young child, she would put her imagination to work, pretending to live in a fantasy world where she could fly, fight the bad guys, and save the world. Although she could never master the art of flying, she did manage to eventually put all those ideas down on paper and is currently working on two series: Black Sheep and NightFly.

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Book Blitz & Excerpt: Revenge de los Muertos + Giveaway

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Revenge de los Muertos
by Talis Jones
(Fifth Sun, #1)
Publication date: November 2nd 2021
Genres: Adult, Urban Fantasy

Selah’s biggest dilemma was trying to decide what to study in college. That is, until she stumbled across a clue to the grandparents she’d never met and hopped on a plane to Mexico where she would discover an entire hidden world of magic and monsters. Her best friend was a bruja, the Chupacabra was more than a myth, and she’d inadvertently caught the attention of the terrifying Blood King with beautiful golden eyes. What started as a two-week vacation quickly devolved into an adventure she might never return from. 

Día de los Muertos had almost arrived and the monsters were on the hunt.

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EXCERPT:

Selah

“G’night,” Noa yawned finally before claiming the remaining bedroom next door.

I moved to shut my own door when Rafael prowled past, likely heading towards his own room at the end of the hall. At least I guessed it was his as it was the only door kept firmly shut. Seeming to sense my gaze, he pivoted and met me at the doorway. Leaning against the frame with his arms crossed he stared deep into my eyes almost as if searching for answers in there though he must not find them because a frown quickly tugged at his mouth.

“How did you and your friend meet?” he asked curiously.

My fingers fiddled nervously with the doorknob as a fond smile lit up my face. “School. We’ve gone to the same school since I can remember and she was always in my classes, sitting with me at lunch, wanting to be my friend. Noa is pretty direct. When she decides something, she makes it happen.”

“I can see that,” he nodded tersely.

Wanting to smooth things over, I thanked him. “I’m really very sorry about the mix up, but thank you for letting us stay. We really don’t mind finding a hotel tomorrow,” I assured him. “This is your home and we don’t want to intrude.”

Something I said, though I couldn’t guess what, caused his lips to twitch. “You are free to stay. I do not mind.” I arched an eyebrow and he released an amused huff. “Much,” he amended.

“Well, thank you,” I offered again. “You are very kind and generous to offer.”

“Not many would use those words to describe me,” he shook his head, his voice low enough that I wasn’t sure I was meant to hear him.

“Then they don’t know you,” I answered anyway. It was an impulsive response because I didn’t know him beyond his name and yet it felt right. Or maybe I was just a people pleaser like Noa teased me of being.

Even if offered in ignorance, my words made him pause. “Call me Rafi,” he smiled. Then with a shove off the door frame, he resumed prowling towards his room.

Leaning out into the hall, I called softly so as not to disturb Noa, “Goodnight, Rafi.”

He sent me a final glance. “Buenas noches, Selah.”

 

Author Bio:

Talis Jones is a Mexican-English author of magic and mischief. Graduated Summa Cum Laude with a degree in Theatre she has explored both stage and film, now finding herself drawn towards the literary world as a new venue for storytelling.

Dog mom, Broadway enthusiast, and life-long bibliophile, Talis currently resides in North Carolina.

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Spotlight & Excerpt: Jaguar Paloma and the Caketown Bar + Giveaway

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Jaguar Paloma and the Caketown Bar

by Jess Wells

Genre: Magical Realism, Historical Fiction

 

In 1865 in the shanty town of Tartatenango, the Caketown Bar is owned by the extraordinary Jaguar Paloma, matriarch of a village that is home to raucous miscreants, cast-off mothers, muleteers, and forgers. Amid drunken monks, a roaring trade in faked marriages just for fun, and the Romani, all balance on the knife-edge between legality and the illicit. Paloma’s life is honed by this community, as their lives are affected by her mystery and magic.

Co-founder of this extraordinary gathering is Orietta Becerra. Breathtakingly beautiful and ambitious, her distillery builds the success of Caketown. But when she crosses the tracks and marries the town’s mayor, her double life severs her friendship with Paloma and the town starts to pay the highest of prices.

Adding to this land of chaos and feminine power is a forger, a murderer, the darker shade of the female heart, and a Civil War that claims men before their time.

Caketown – men want to destroy it. Women want to play in it. The township itself has to fight on all sides to survive.

Told in evocative magical realism, Jaguar Paloma and the Caketown Bar is a tale of wronged women who stand up to be counted.

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After the government had burned it to the ground, it was hard to imagine the Caketown Bar surrounded by a raucous shanty town, home to cast-off mothers and unclaimed children, filled with lively mirth and mayhem together, where every day was a celebration even if not a holiday, where peacocks cawed from the backs of donkeys, and women’s wigs and bunting were playthings for the monkeys in the trees when they stopped playing catch with the dogs. Flowers of unknown origin bloomed in the night and then flew away, and blue mist or green fog rolled in without warning. It was a town where morning was heralded by a rum cask being rolled across a dance floor, and the groggy question of who had arrived in the night; evening announced by the sizzle of lightbulbs in bent sockets and men slapping the dust off their pants with their hard-working hats, women putting a baby to the breast and finally sitting down. Tartatenango, Spanish slang for Caketown, hosted every traveling circus and any Romany family who roamed the southern country of Calexicobia, every soothsayer and shabby hawker of medicinal nonsense, any run-away from the army, convent, or hostile home. No one was turned away for being muddy or misshapen or ragged. Everyone was welcome until proven unworthy and it was just assumed that everyone was on their second chance: at the Caketown Bar, sharing stories of the past was much more intimate than nudity.

In the beginning, seekers from the north trekked through the jungle, veered off a minor mule-train road just after the third hollow acacia tree and followed a wide animal track to find it. Burdened with sadness and loss on top of their possessions, they trudged toward the little town whose name was whispered among the laundresses or spoken low by the cook after a glance over her shoulder. The midwives knew of it, the women of the theater troupes and Romani spoke of it late at night.

Those who used the snaking Magdalena river that was its western boundary had an easier time finding it. The river was calm and narrow at this spot before growing wide and wild as it headed north toward the sea. Boaters set their sights on a beach between two enormous white boulders that were smooth and firm like the breasts of a new mother in the morning.

Its founding was more a protest than a selection. Paloma Marti, who was six foot five, at seventeen far younger than she looked because of her surprising height, saw the hungry glare and familiar danger from the boatmen and two male passengers on the barge she was riding. When the ringleader flashed a knife under the guise of cleaning his nails, she abandoned her small bag and dove off the side of the boat, swimming toward the inviting boulders.


Jess Wells is the author of six novels and five books of short stories, winner of the Bronze Medal in the 2020 Foreword Reviews Indies Award for Adult Fiction/Romance, the recipient of a San Francisco Arts Commission Grant for Literature, a four-time finalist for the national Lambda Literary Award, and a member of the Saints & Sinners Literary Hall of Fame. Her work has appeared in more than three dozen literary journals and anthologies, has been reprinted in England and translated into Italian and Dutch.

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