#TeaserTuesday: The Witches of Westwick College
Tag: Teaser Tuesday
#TeaserTuesday: The Fool
Well, I officially have a release date for The Fool! December 28th marks the release of the paranormal romance novella, which is the prequel in the Games We Play serial. The King, first in the serial, will debut in 2016.
If you like vampires, masquerade balls, vampire hunters who suck a their jobs, and heroines who don’t put up with bullshit, this piece will be for you. While you wait for the serial itself to release, why not give the prequel a try?
The Fool will be free for the first month of its release, and will then be on sale for $0.99 on all major online retailers. ARCs are available. If you wan to participate in a review tour or a release day tour, I’m also working with my usual promo company to get something going.
Check out the book on Goodreads for all the dirty details, and you can creep my inspiration board on Pinterest too to get a feel for the book.
But this is about a teaser, right?
Sorry I kept you waiting…
Harriswood sat in the dip of a valley, surrounded by tumbling hills on one side, pine forests on the other two, and a lake to the north that was always too cold for swimming, even in the balmy summer months. It was a painter’s dream, drawing hundreds of tourists in the warmer months for hillside camping and downtown partying.
Little did they know the city was home to a few old vamp clans always looking for their next meal or gang grudge to settle, along with two packed high schools full of surly, destructive human teens aching to escape to somewhere bigger and better.
Delia had come from bigger and better. She preferred Harriswood.
Midway through her examination of the penthouse suite pics posted on the Banesview Hotel’s website—something she could only dream about experiencing first-hand—her phone shrieked obnoxiously by her side. The damn thing was new, and she still wasn’t quite up to speed on how to change the volume or silence a call. After nearly dropping her laptop, she grabbed the phone and swiped her finger across it, too flustered to even check who was calling at four in the afternoon.
“What?” she demanded, assuming it was Hugh calling back to give her another piece of his mind for hanging up earlier. The voice on the line chuckled, and she immediately felt heat rise to her cheeks. It wasn’t Hugh—not even close.
“I’m sorry,” Kain said smoothly, his familiar deep rumble making her sit up a little straighter. She was a sucker for accents, and the Irish hunter always managed to get the better of her—professionally and privately. “Did I wake you up?”
“No,” she mumbled, slowly closing her laptop and setting it aside. Of course it’d be Kain calling her—gorgeous, brown-eyed, shaggy-haired Kain with abs that could break a man’s fist on impact. “I was just…I just got off the phone with Hugh. Thought he might be calling me back.”
“You really need to hire a better informant, Dels. Hugh’s shit.”
“I dunno,” she said as she stood, pacing between the couch and the window of her apartment. Down below, traffic had started to pile up as people fled the downtown business district, probably hoping to start their weekends early. “He usually gives me pretty good leads.”
“I’ll tell my guy to cut you a deal in the future.”
Delia could almost hear the smile in his voice, and she wished she couldn’t. He was probably only doing it because he’d snuck away without saying anything the last time he spent the night at her place. It was never fun to wake up to a raging hangover and an empty bed. While she’d been hurt at the time, the incident had been easy to brush off; Kain, like many of the hotshots in their league, male and female, wasn’t looking for anything serious.
“So what’s up?” she asked, perching on the wide set white window ledge, her knees bent up to her chest and an arm wrapped around them. “Anything I can do for you on this fine afternoon?”
“Me and the guys are headed to McKinney’s tonight,” he told her, and she practically melted hearing him say the bar’s name with that scrumptious Irish lilt of his. “Want to tag along? I can pick you up on the way.”
“Aren’t you on patrol tonight?”
“Switched shifts with Garret,” he said.
Down below, a woman’s purse seemed to have spontaneously combusted in the middle of the intersection, its innards scattered everywhere. While Delia felt bad for her, she couldn’t help but chuckle softly at the roar of horns that blared once the traffic light switched to green and the woman was still there collecting her things.
Kain cleared his throat on the other end. “What’s funny? Something I said?”
“Oh, no…” Delia rolled her eyes as the woman continued gathering her things, cars inching around her to make the light. If they stopped rushing her, maybe she’d stop dropping things. “Just watching the usual disaster outside my window.”
“Wish I had an apartment on Main Street. I’d never need a TV. Always a show over there, day or night.”
“Yeah, that’s totally why I don’t have cable,” she said with a sigh. That and all the local cable packages were ridiculously expensive—even more so than the bigger and better city she’d moved from once she turned eighteen. She’d always expected smaller towns to be less of a drain on her wallet, but she’d slowly learned that wasn’t the case, not in Harriswood anyway.
“So you comin’ or what?” Kain demanded, and she was pretty sure she heard him opening a can in the background.
“Was that a beer?”
“Stop changing the subject, Dels.”
“I…”
She licked her lips, wanting nothing more than to climb into the front seat of Kain’s car and breathe him in. He was a catch, through and through, aside from his sheer unwillingness to commit to anyone.
Oh, and he couldn’t show up to any bar, pub, or club without a girl on his arm. Her buzz dampened a little when she wondered just how many other girls in his hunter social circle he’d tried to call before he dialed her.
“I know you’re not working,” he wheedled playfully, which brought a smile back to her lips. “I checked the schedule. Come on. We’ll drink, play darts…maybe I’ll feel you up in the parking lot again…”
She scoffed, her cheeks starting to hurt from grinning.
“Wow, how can a lady resist such a perfect evening?”
“Right, so I’ll pick you up then?”
“No,” she said, not sounding quite as assertive as she would have liked. “No, I’m…I’m okay. I’m not really feeling a bar night.”
The stunned silence on the other end made her bite her lip, knowing full-well that he’d probably see through her lie in ten seconds flat.
“But you love McKinney’s,” Kain insisted slowly, as if working through her excuse aloud. “And you like hanging out with the other hunters. Beer usually gets you anywhere…”
She replaced her lip with her pinky nail, staring out the window, wincing as he slowly poked through her lies.
“…Dels, are you—”
“I’m training tomorrow morning,” she said a little too quickly, gripping her hand in a fist to keep her from biting her nails. “I don’t want to be hungover.”
“Since when?”
“Since the last time I barely made it through warm-ups,” she argued. That much was true, at least. “I’m just having dinner with a friend instead, then it’ll be an early night.”
Kain’s continued silence stumped her; either he’d swallowed the story and was annoyed he’d lost yet another female companion to escort to the bar, or he still wasn’t buying it.
“You don’t do dinner with friends—”
“I do so!” Her voice cracked, and she wrinkled her nose, knowing she’d given herself away.
“Chatting with Hugh…for… Oh Jesus, Dels.” He huffed noisily into the phone, and she slid off the wide white window ledge, pacing again. “Please tell me you didn’t fall for that masquerade bullshit the snitches have been trying to sell everyone all week.”
The heat that flooded her cheeks this time was no longer from that sexy accent. Instead, she felt every eye roll, annoyed glare, and pitying sigh the other hunters threw at her on a weekly basis. Squaring her shoulders, she tried to keep her voice even.
“Kain, I don’t want to go to the bar tonight—”
“Oh for fuck’s sake,” he said, groaning. “You are going, aren’t you? Delia, it’s a crock of shit.”
Oh. Shit. Wrapped up in the action already? You’ll just have to snag your free copy December 28th.
#TeaserTuesday: ‘Til Death
‘Til Death is a free short story in the Lovers and Liars universe. Snag it November 7th on Smashwords. Add it to your TBR on Goodreads.
Teaser Tuesday: It Begins Here
I’m very excited to announce that myself and six other up-and-coming authors will be releasing an anthology this November. It’s the first of two anthologies we’ll be writing together, and this one focuses on beginnings and change. We’ve all worked in different genres, and many of the 10K pieces are a part of a larger fictional universe for the author.
For my contribution, I’ll be examining the beginnings of Loki and Aphrodite’s respective marriages. Set centuries before The Maenad of Manhattan, ‘Til Death is a brief glimpse into the lives and loves of the two main characters of the Lovers and Liars serial.
For #TeaserTuesday, I’ve opted to share a little snippet featuring our favourite trickster. Oh Loki… Always up to no good.
Enjoy!
L O K I
Odin. Chuckling, jötunn-born trickster Loki stood amongst the trees and underbrush, his hands on his hips, head tilted back. Above, the forest canopy paused for a moment, the outstretched branches and leaves of two great trees reaching and reaching for one another, yet failing to connect. In that opening, he spied two large ravens, circling him slowly, silently. Shaking his head, he set his cloth pack down and dug through it. As soon as he found what he was looking for, he straightened again, lifting a coin-filled sack to the heavens.
“See?” While he spoke no louder than a whisper, his voice crawled up the nearby trees and shook the leaves. “I haven’t spent it… Not a single coin. Fly back to your master and tell him. You’re making it hard for me to travel unnoticed.”
The ravens circled twice more, then disappeared on the wind.
“Have faith, brother,” he muttered, chuckling again while he repacked his things. Mighty Odin, All-father to all the nine realms and their multitude of inhabitants, had only recently taken Loki as his blood-brother. Their relationship was good—for now—but he could see why the old Aesir god might not trust him completely. After all, Loki dealt in mayhem, and had he spent all the gold meant strictly to appease a band of warmongering giants, it wouldn’t have been the first time he’d put Odin and his kin in a tight spot.
And so he’d sent his ravens to check in—Loki felt only just slighted. He did have a reputation, one based on merit and fact, and Odin would have been a fool to trust him entirely with so much wealth. His life? Of course Odin could trust Loki with his life. They were blood-brothers after all, bonded by the exchange of blood and the shared scars of battle. Odin had welcomed Loki in to his clan, to his elite tier of godly creatures—Loki owed him a great deal.
However, gold was such a common thing, and Loki felt no allegiance to that. He cared not for the grumbles about the giants, nor did he think a sack of trinkets would quiet the tribe’s battle-lust.
He should know, given his parentage.
But he’d volunteered to be the messenger, the delivery boy for Odin and his ilk. Fleet-footed Loki, momentarily praised by all in the feasting hall. There was no set time to deliver the coinage, but he vaguely recalled there being some sense of urgency.
Which was, of course, why he’d stopped to play cards with a band of elves he met along the way. Gambling with the cretins was too enjoyable an activity to pass up. His skills, however, were a little rusty, and he’d been forced to steal back all the gold he’d lost while the creatures slept the following evening.
Each coin was back in its rightful place now, however. All was well, and through the forests and mountains and valleys he’d go, beyond the fjords and glaciers, to deliver a gift from the Aesir to the jötunn tribe bent on destruction.
Feeling somewhat parched, Loki deviated from his path, traipsing over thick roots and around unpassable twined greenery, until he reached a gentle stream. The water was crisp and cold, slicing through the forest, determined to reach the sea. As Loki brought handfuls of frigid water to his mouth, he noted that the woodland on the other side of the stream was less dense, and rather than venturing back to his previous path, he crossed the water and traveled on the other side.
Even if the region was new to him, he prided his sense of direction—he’d reach the giants, one way or another.
Slowly, even the placement of the trees thinned, the sun finding his face more and more oft as he hiked. He paused when he noticed that the treeline was coming to an end up ahead, his path instead opening up into a sprawling valley. Squinting, he swore mountains loomed in the distance, and then gave a triumphant smile; he’d been taking the long way round before—this was more direct, surely.
Shoulders back, the trickster strolled out of the forest and into the field, only to be hit by the most pleasant array of aromas he’d ever had the fortune of smelling. It was so powerful that he actually dropped his things and turned, nose up and eyes scouring the relatively flat plane for the source of such beauty.
He found it eventually in the form of a garden. Pack slung over his shoulder, Loki advanced on it curiously, knowing that someone had to have planted it out here. The arrangement was too precise. His first thought was Idunn, but he knew the goddess had her preferred territory to sow her greens. It was unlikely she’d venture so deep into this region of Midgard. The colours were exquisite, vibrant and bright, like nothing he’d seen thus far. Browns and greens and greys and the occasional white had kept Loki company on his little adventure. But here there were purples and blues, pinks and oranges, reds and yellows. Some were native to the area, while others had come from the lands to the south, others the east.
Someone had an affinity for delicate flowers. They’d be a wanderer too, traveling far and wide to collect the necessary seeds.
A wanderer like Loki.
Gahhhh so beyond excited to share the rest of the tale with you. Stay tuned for more details on the release, and keep your eyes peeled for a chance to win a free paperback copy!
Liz Meldon - Romance Author 