I may have mentioned that 2018 was going to be a busy year for me…

….which is why, barely a week after the publication of Staff & Crown, I’m bringing your attention to another book that has a piece of me in it–AKA, one of my stories.

Introducing Fell Beasts & Fair; a Noblebright Anthology, from Spring Song Press. This collection of 23 stories ranging from short stories to novellettes will be out on March 20th, and it is my delight to share with you a short excerpt from my own offering (plus an excerpt from one of my favourites in the collection).

Cloudy With a Chance of Dropbears is a UF novellette that takes place in the world of the UF series I will begin publishing half way through this year, and features that most Australian of mystical creatures–the Dropbear. Below is a sample for your delectation! 

–oOo–

I went and got my own coffee before the coffee boy got back, eager to sniff out more payments that had a suspicious lack of product to go with them. I put it down on my desk and settled myself to sit down, but something sharp and hot seared my leg where my Behind Identify Card should be. I yelped and pinched it out of my pocket. Behind magic is the good stuff, but there’s nothing that melts faster than an Identify Card, magic or no magic. Something about magic and the newer human manufactured substances doesn’t blend well.

Now that I looked at the card, it was a lot blacker than it should be. Well, parts of it were blacker than they should be and it was still hot in my fingers, and now there was nothing burning in my pocket… I squinted down at it, irritated to find that my glasses weren’t around my neck, and reached for the desk where the missing glasses should have been.

My desk wasn’t there. Actually, the office wasn’t there. No wonder the ground was so squishy beneath my peg—it was real grass, not the magic-fake they put in Behind offices.

Great. Someone had relocated the office without telling me. I’d send off a pretty well loaded message as soon as I found where those goons in Location had parked it this time. I’m as security conscious as the next leprechaun, but there was no way we’d been found so soon after the last move. I looked down at my Identify card again, and it looked a bit red in the middle. Red in the middle, and if I squinted at it just right, there were words making a black scrawl in the centre of the red bit.

Kill the kid and you can come back, it said.

I snuffled a dry laugh down at it. Somebody was having a laugh. It was a bit stupid, though; kid was the word used for human children, and who was going to find a kid Behind? I looked a bit closer, and a sticky breeze swept across my forearms, raising goosebumps in spite of its warmth. That wasn’t just red behind the writing. It was Red. If somebody was having a laugh, why was my Identify Card marked Red for Deport? Deportation Red meant tried, executed, and deported. No return to Behind.

That was stupid. Someone had to be having a laugh. I was still Behind…wasn’t I? But where in Behind was I? I looked around me, dazedly taking in the dark green foliage of trees and the playground, and the half tree that someone had turned into a house—wait. The playground? Fae don’t have playgrounds. And why was the heat so heavy today? Where in Behind had access to this kind of muggy heat? Muggy…muggy heat? There’s no muggy heat Behind; too many weather mages.

“No,” I said numbly, sweat springing to my brow. “Because that means I’m—that means I’m in the human world.”

Red for Deport. I was in the human world.

–oOo–

And because I really loved the feel and characters of Alena Sullivan’s Blanche, Bear-Wife, here is a sample of that delightful read…

–oOo–

It’s during the ice storm in February that the bear first comes by. “I hate to be a bother, but it’s mighty cold out,” he rumbles apologetically, hugging his ice-crusted coat tight around his shoulders as he ducks through the doorway. “It is, that,” I admit, smiling a little crookedly and pouring a hot mug of apple cider. I reckon that’s the sort of thing a bear could drink— it’s something warm, at any rate. I set it on the counter as the bear lumbers up and takes a seat on the stool across from me, gingerly testing it against his weight before he settles properly.

Rosie nudges me, elbow bordering on painful against my ribs. “He’s a bear,” she grits out through clenched teeth.

I lift a shoulder in a shrug. “It’s cold out there.” My Gramma, who raised me, is a little old lady who believes in real Southern hospitality, in making everybody welcome and looking after them all the same. When she opened this place, it was the only joint on the street that didn’t have a sign in the window that said whites only, and she never looked twice at anybody, not for their color or their war wounds or their piercings or tattoos. She doesn’t like my tattoos much, but she loves me, with or without them, and I’m not gonna shame her by turning anybody away in this weather.

“A freaking bear,” Rosie repeats, a little louder, a little shrill, and I can feel my mouth go tight around a cringe. The bear flinches.

“That’s no call to be impolite,” I say.

–oOo–

Fell Beasts & Fair will be out on March 20th, and is available for preorder on Kindle, Kobo, iBooks, Smashwords, and B&N. Paperback will be available soon!