Sunday Soup - October 9

In The Soup This Week... Devon Monk, Aaron Michael Ritchey, Laura Lee Guhrke, Elisabeth Staab, Julie Ann Walker, Kim Harrison.

Soup Dish:  on my mind/good links
Well, it's been kind of a long time since I've posted.  I keep starting these Soup posts, and just sort of not feeling like I have much to say. My social media feeds are full of the latest political horrors and it's difficult to keep up the chipper, book-loving voice I've established here.  One more month to go before the election circus is over.  But nonetheless, I've accumulated a few links that have nothing to do with the US presidential election.

✽Kim Harrison reveals her newest cover and some cover art wisdom in five parts: One Two Three Four Five. Liked the read, looking forward to the book! I'm behind on the last few books of the series, but I feel like I can probably read the pre-quel without catching up.

✽I miss Jennifer Crusie. I wish she'd go back to writing witty contemporary romance with amazing dialog. In the meantime, here's an interview with her.

✽I've been thinking about running a non-conference-related Five Words game -- I'd love to hear from my readers, do you like this feature? I thought at the end I'd offer a formatted PDF for free download.

✽ This is an ad for Ravenswood Leather. You'll like it anyway. You're welcome.
 


Saved and Sampled:  titles that caught my eye on social media, samples waiting on my Kindle to be, well, sampled. As you can see, I'm not doing my TBR-reduction plan any good. 


✽Faery Rift, by Jae Vogel
✽Fury, by Laurann Doehner. This was highly rec'd by a friend but I'm having trouble getting past the "evil scientists performing sadistic lab experiments" trope. These make me super-squeamish.
✽The Viscount's Mistress, by Claire DuLac. I like the premise, which implies the HEA might be as a mistress. I feel like that's a fairly realistic scenario for the Regency period and I'd be interested to see it play out.
✽Feral, by Laxmi Hariharan. Advertised for fans of Nalini Singh, so we shall see!

What I'm reading
✽You guys, I read a lit-fic book and I liked it! I'm dipping a toe into a book club at my office, and read Circling the Sun, by Paula McLain. I didn't realize until I read the afterwords that it is based on a real person, set in early 20th century Kenya. Basically it's the same cast of characters as Out of Africa (which I've never seen) with a different focus. It made me want to go read All The Hemingway. I did feel like it had some weaknesses as a novel, but they were structural things about the facts of the MC's life-- because real life isn't as tidy as a novel, go figure. Anyway, I liked it and would recommend it.

✽I'm almost done with Laura Lee Guhrke's No Mistress of Mine. It's not bad, but I'm having trouble staying engaged. For me, it has been put-down-able, but that could just be about my scattered attention span these days.

✽I finished Killdeer Winds, by Aaron Michael Ritchey and am way behind on a full review.  This is the second in his Juniper Wars serial, and I really enjoyed it. YA is not my usual wheelhouse, but it's nice to step outside your usual genre once in a while.

✽Death and Relaxation, by Devon Monk. A really fun new series kickoff set in a small coastal Oregon town, where deities of various pantheons go to check in their powers and relax like a regular Joe. Naturally, things get weird.  Really enjoyed the world-building.  Book 2 is out as well, and Amazon is calling it a "two-book series" -- so I don't know if it will go any longer than that.  Monk seems to have a bit of series ADD going on, skipping from one project to another. I like them all! I just hope these either resolve nicely or that there are more coming.

✽ At the Stars, Elisabeth Staab. I read this one a couple months ago, after meeting and hanging out with Elisabeth at RT16 for a while. A small town, NA romance, very sweet. Enjoyed it. 

✽ In Rides Trouble, Julie Ann Walker. Fast-paced, suspenseful, high-stakes MC/Spec-Ops romance. It's really good, but not for me. Basically, the more suspenseful a book is, the less I like it. But if that's your catnip, you'll like this one.


That's it for this week. Happy reading!

Dandelion Iron, by Aaron Michael Ritchey - Review

Information
Title: Dandelion Iron
Series: The Juniper Wars
Author: Aaron Michael Ritchey
Publisher: WordFire Press
Release Date: April 11, 2016 
Reviewing: eARC for Kindle 
Reason for reading: Author love

The Short Answer
Saddle up folks, we're going on a post-apocalyptic cattle drive where Little House on the Prairie meets the Terminator and Jules Verne meets Louis L'Amour. Mob-style protection wars rage from synthetic-helium-lofted dirigibles, machine guns are a girl's best friend, and every sperm is sacred. The word "rollicking" was invented for this series. It's out next Tuesday and YOU WANT IT.

The Blurb

It is the year 2058. The Sino-American War has decimated several generations of men, and the Sterility Epidemic has made 90% of the surviving males sterile.

Electricity does not function in five western states. Colorado, New Mexico, Utah, Wyoming, and Montana are territories once again. Collectively, they are known as the Juniper.

It is the most dangerous place on Earth.

On a desperate post-apocalyptic cattle drive to save their family ranch, Cavatica Weller and her two gunslinging sisters stumble across a rare boy. Sharlotte wants to send him away, Wren wants to sell him…and Cavatica falls in love with him.

Little do they know that an inhuman army is searching for the boy and will stop at nothing to find him.

Welcome to the world of The Juniper Wars.

Author Love
I have always chosen books based on authors. In the old days, I had a short list of auto-buy authors, and if I tried a new author, it was because my list was dry for new releases, and maybe I got a recommendation from a trusted human in person. These days, I find authors through buzz on social media, recs from other bookish people, and more recently, conferences.  Ritchey started out with a warm fuzzy feeling when he opted in to not one, but both of the flash fiction stories that ran on Alpha Heroes in the run-up to RUDCon, and then he was just super fun and nice at the conference with a wicked awesome sense of humor, which is both wicked and awesome. So that's why I'm reading this particular title.

About the Book
In-person humor doesn't always translate to an author's work, and the voice in Dandelion Iron is so unexpected that I would not say they align exactly.  Cavatica does not have the dry, sly humor that the author does, but the book is filled with it, in the references and the linguistic choices- Exhibit A would be the three dogs named Bella, Edward and Jacob. While this story is not a comedy, and touches on some darker themes of alcoholism and abuse, the tongue-in-cheek world-building never takes itself too seriously.

Cavatica's first person narration does a outstanding job of calling to mind the fears and aspirations of youth: the desire to be heroic, the fear of failure, the insecurities and yearning and melodrama. There's a cadence, a musicality and rhythm to her speech that calls to mind the oral tradition of storytelling, of an audience rapt around a flickering campfire or hearth. It's a delight to read, and Cavvy, a delightful character that surprises herself and everyone around her.

It must be said that this story is being published as a 6-book serial. We get through a battle in this book, but are only getting hints of the real conflict behind the war to come. The end is a bit of a cliffhanger, but there's good resolution to the first skirmish in The Juniper Wars, and the following books are expected to release in quick succession.


Favorite quote:

It was raw shakti, but right then it didn't feel like a creative, female energy.

To borrow from the Hindu myths, it was Kali's fury in her eyes.

And what did Kali's fury do?

It destroyed the world.

Well, let the world die. I was going to save the ranch even if at the end of things, it was the only dirt left in the universe.

It was our land, where our parents and baby sisters were buried. It would be ours, forever and ever, amen.

You don't let go of sacred ground. You fight to the death for it.

On a promotional note, I've never heard of humblebundle before, but it's definitely worth checking out. Dandelion Iron is being offered as a part of the third tier of this bundle, with a sliding price scale. Very interesting pricing model, and some great authors in this bundle.

Around the Blogosphere --what others are saying

Dave Butler- a similar assessment
Chessy The Cat - 5 Stars
Awnna Marie Evans - a rave indeed
Lee French - little less enthused, put off by the teen-ish slang & parts of the worldbuilding

Bonus: Me and This Guy!

At super-fun Reading Until Dawn Con last October.

Sunday Soup, January 3

In The Soup This Week... Thea Harrison, Alyssa Day, Kristin Higgins, Robin D. Owens, and Aaron Michael Ritchey

Soup Dish:  Happy New Year!
✽I hope everyone out there in RomLandia had a happy and safe holiday, however you choose to celebrate.  Ours was very low-key, just the four of us in my nuclear family. I think my kids are getting pretty bored with low-key though, so next year I might need to plan more.

✽There are so many lists out there! So many. I spent several hours yesterday sifting through "best of" lists, and I don't know about you guys, but I'm a little burned out on lists. I have three goals for 2016 around reading and blogging though:

1. Read twelve non-fiction titles. I am seriously so oppositional about this. I have the hardest time reading non-fiction where there are no emotions and no dialog and, idk, just everything I love about reading is missing from non-fiction. But there are topics that I am interested in and I need to train my brain a little better. I'm too young to stop learning stuff.

2. Burn down my enormous pile of physical books. Not literally. I'm going to try to make a rule for myself to read two physical books from my stash for every new book I acquire, electronically or physically. I just seriously do not have room for what I've got and it's becoming a bit of a problem. I bought Thea Harrison's Shadow's End and read it yesterday, so next up is two physical books. I've had this series for some time, and seems like the right time for it now:

Oh no! I'm missing #2! so I have to buy it, right? Right.

3. Post two real review posts per month. I'm pretty comfy in my mini-review groove with these Sunday Soup posts, and I'm glad that I've been able to talk about the books I've been reading in a way that doesn't feel like work. But I get a good sense of accomplishment from writing a real review too, even though it's a little more effort.

✽As a consolation for not posting a list of lists, here's a great article about a list.  Hmmm. I love spreadsheets; isn't it kind of weird that I don't track my reading that way?  Hmmm.

What I'm reading
December for me is 3 weeks of increasingly frantic activity and then a week of laziness. And by "lazy," I mean, I read a whole bunch.

✽I went on a small Thea Harrison binge this past week, starting with the three novellas in the Dragon Family Album, and then I really really wanted to read Liam Takes Manhattan, but it said in NO UNCERTAIN TERMS that I needed to read Shadow's End first, so I ask you, what could I do? I mean, I really had no choice. So I downloaded and read Shadows' End for my New Year's Day read. It was fantastic. Harrison's paranormal highs are so high, and the lows so low. There may have been a few tissues involved in this read. I haven't gotten to Liam yet, but I'm glad I read Shadow's End first.

✽OK, in keeping with my 2:1 goal, since I bought Shadow's End, I picked up a stash book next, which was HeartMate, by Robin D. Owens.  It was OK. I'm not sure I really want to binge on the whole series though. The beginning was a little clunky, but I liked it better by the end. The worldbuilding... some of it was really interesting; I liked her treatment of the Passages (a physically demanding dreamquest sort of experience), but not being a cat lover, I found her talking cats to be not-quite-equal-parts irritating/endearing. I am probably in a minority here, so that might be the thing that other people love the most. I'll give it one more book before I decide about the series as a whole, since I have them already (I bought 4 books for about a dollar at a thrift store awhile back).

✽Before I started on Thea Harrison, I had already pre-ordered Alyssa Day's new shifter novel, Dead Eye, so it showed up for me like a Christmas present. First in a new series, it has wonderful characters, Day's trademark wisecracky irreverent humor, and plenty of paranormal action. Quick, fun read.  Looking forward to the next one, already available for pre-order. I'm going to have to get cracking on my stash books to earn this purchase.

✽I read three paranormals for the March RT edition, and I liked them all quite a lot, but looking for a change of pace, I bought Kristan Higgins If You Only Knew and loved it. Higgins is a bit of a Sure Thing for me, and this was no exception. A little different than most contemporaries, it makes a strong statement about what marriage should be, and reads quite a bit more like traditional "women's fiction" than romance for at least the first half of the book. The romance element is more unsure than usual, more like real life, and the hero is really quite remote. I connected immediately with the characters, which was good because I had to overlook the first-person present tense--a huge turnoff for me.

✽Lastly, I got an ARC from RUDC author Aaron Michael Ritchey that is well out of my usual reading but OH MY GAHD it was an incredible read. I don't want to give much away here as I'll be doing a full review on it but it's kind of like Jules Verne meets Calamity Jane meets Little House on the Prairie and whoa. I loved it a lot.

January Stash Reads: 1
January Bought Reads: 1*
January Non-Fiction Reads: 0

*I'm only counting the Thea Harrison full length here. Everything else I already owned as of 12/31/2015.

The Beauty of the Beast

When I decided to kick off Conference Thursday, I guess I miscounted, because I thought I had more Thursdays left in the year!  I was going to skip this week because these posts don't really suit the (US) Thanksgiving holiday, but I have Big Plans -- Big Big Plans, I tell you-- for December, so I thought we'd just do ConThu a day early.

Because of my mild obsession with 80s music, the title that came to mind for this story was "Ring My Belle," which, OK, was 1979, so that's a bit of a stretch, and it didn't really suit the story.  Since Belle's kickoff author, Roselynn Cannes, gave it a title already, we'll just go with that.  With thanks again for my fabulous contributing authors: Roselynn Cannes, Katee Robert, Danica Favorite, E.D. Walker (deejay extraordinaire, who knew??), Aaron Michael Ritchey, and Mario Acevedo -- here is the story in its entirety, including an ending... of sorts.

 

==============================

The smell of baking bread, lentil beans, and fish filtered into Belle’s awareness. It was the potency of the fish in particular that woke her, and her eyes fluttered open. Discombobulated, she tried to remember what had happened. Clearly she was in an alleyway in the market, but the memory of how or why she was there eluded her.

Fully aware of each and every pebble digging painfully into her, she sat up. With hands made clumsy by their violent shaking, Belle took a moment to attempt to fight the panic threatening by focusing on the mundane task of brushing off the gravel still sticking to her naked skin. Despite her efforts, her heart sped up, stuttering over itself. Her breath sawed in and out of her lungs. Dirt, and what looked uncannily like blood, caked itself into the creases of her knuckles and underneath her fingernails. One nail had been broken. Ripped off all the way to the midpoint and her finger throbbed in acknowledgement.

She would need to check a calendar to be sure, but she would guess that it had been exactly twenty-nine days since the last time. The last full moon. Ambivalence consumed her. Snaked its way up from her belly and threatened to choke her. She wasn’t sure if she should laugh maniacally because she might be losing her mind, or sob because she knew for a fact that she wasn’t.

Belle had to get home and she had to get home now. She pushed to her feet, her muscles shaking as if she'd run long and hard last night. For all she knew, that was exactly what she'd inadvertently done, chasing down some poor prey who hadn't stood a chance. She moved out of the alley, but froze when she heard tintinnabulation. That could only mean one thing...

They knew.

She walked as quickly as she could without actually running, heading for the willow that grew next to the massive cathedral in the center of town. It was such a strange contradiction of old world and new that normally she, like most other people in her small town, avoided it. Today, it might just be her salvation.

"Going somewhere in a hurry?"

Belle’s heart fell to her ankles. Not today, please, not today. She hurried on, hoping to appear she hadn’t heard him. Maybe, this time, he wouldn’t harass her. No such luck.

Gustavus LeGume drifted over to her, then matched her pace. His long legs fell in tromping boots. His hair didn’t move, too slicked, too black, too shiny--freshly washed and even more freshly combed. He whirled in front of her, stopping her march.

"You are such a strange girl, Belle, and yet, I am inexplicably drawn to you. Would you like some of my forbidden fruit?"

She wanted to growl. Actually, she wanted to bite.

He shoved a segment of an orange fruit into her face. "It is a ribbed clementine. For your pleasure."

Her first instinct was to slap the fruit away, punch him in the face, and run. Yet, she had to remain the unassuming maiden everyone expected her to be, however different she was. Any attention she drew to herself might be dangerous.

Belle sighed and said, "Oh Gustavus, I wish I could, but of course, since I’m an unassuming maiden, I must always be limiting what I eat. For after all, a comely face requires a trim figure."

"Of course." His knowing nod made her want to rip the lungs from his chest, fill them up with air, and parade the grisly balloons around as an example to others. Where did such thoughts come from? She knew. All too well.

She had to get away from Gustavus and get to the willow by the church as quickly and as demurely as possible. One thing about her monthly escapades—she didn’t have to be so horrifying demure. She could horrifying in other ways.  Belle brushed past Guztavus and hurried down the street, hoping he would get the hint.

Instead he plunged after her into the street. "Where are you off to, ma Belle?" Gustavus let out a loud laugh, clearly pleased with his own cleverness. His mouth opened so wide she could see his uvula swinging at the back of his throat.

Belle restrained a low growl of annoyance. Unassuming maidens did not growl. Unassuming maidens also did not rip people's throats out. More's the pity. "I have an appointment, ah, at the church. Please, don't let me keep you from your shopping."

"Nonsense." He tossed a Clementine from one hand to the other. "I'll walk with you. It's a fine day to walk with a fine lady."

Lord spare me from the wit of Gustavus. But, seeing no graceful way out, she continued walking with him down the street. Her heart thumped with tension with each step they took together, and she glanced around, waiting to catch that ringing sound again. Maybe she'd heard wrong, maybe they hadn't found her, after all.

But, even as she had the hopeful thought, she caught the sound again, a bright ringing of soft bells. The sound should be cheerful, but it only made her stomach lump with dread. She picked her pace up again. A skittering started down the street with a flash of something that caught the sun-- a mass of small, shining ball-bearings rolling toward her. "Gustavus, look ou--"

With a flash, the ball bearings exploded around her, cutting her skin and blinding her with light. Gustavus barreled into her, knocking the two of them down to the hard pavement together. He was howling with pain or fear, a regular caterwaul of sound that grated on her nerve endings. Belle shoved at his shoulder to get him off her while he whimpered in a ball on the street.

Her clothes were torn and she bled from many cuts, but one of the few virtues of her…predicament was an accelerated healing factor. She took off at a run. Maybe there was still time, maybe she could make it to the willow--

Someone slammed into her from the side, slamming her against the wall of the nearest building. She thrashed to throw her attacker off, but he only let out a deep, warm laugh. "Now, now. I just wanted to chat."

She froze, arrested by the rich baritone of his voice. The fiend had deep blue eyes, a chiseled chin like granite from the local quarry, and the fullest, lushest, most kissable lips she'd ever seen.

"You're a very difficult woman to catch up with you know." The stranger smiled as he said it, and her heart sped a little at the sight.

She let her body melt against the wall and he instinctively relaxed his grip on her. "Is that so?"

He smiled again, pleased and smug about her compliance.

That was when she bit him.

The stranger yelped, drawing the attention of the proprietor of a nearby kiosk. A fine time for someone to notice that something might be amiss in the market. Belle shook her head. They don’t notice an explosion, but the man’s whining over a little bite suddenly has everyone on alert. She glanced over at him. Okay, maybe it wasn’t such a little bite after all. She’d feel guilty over the blood gushing from his wound, but at this point, she knew she only had a minute, if not seconds, to get away before they sent others.

"Do you need some help?" The man in charge of the kiosk, wearing a zucchini green t-shirt with the face of a dinosaur with an all-too happy grin, approached.

Salvation.

Ordinarily, Belle wasn’t a fan of members of the Order of the Reptile. They talked incessantly of things that were hopelessly boring, but she’d been told that in bind, they’d help her. She glanced back at the stall where he’d been hawking his wares- flimsy cast-offs that people wouldn’t pay good money for, except to support the reptilian cause. But… one item caught her eye.

"Is that your scooter?"

He looked at her like she’d just told him his dinosaur was stupid. Belle sighed. The man she’d bit moaned and started staggering to his feet. She did not have time for this. Quickly, she murmured the secret phrase that was supposed to get the cooperation of Order members.

The man cursed, but nodded, then handed her his keys.

Finally! Something was going her way!

Belle climbed on the scooter, steadied it perpendicular to the pavement, and got ready to zoom away. Problem was, the scooter wouldn’t kick over. Her jaw clenched in frustration. If it wasn’t one damn thing after another. A glance to the fuel gage told her the problem. The scooter was out of fuel, specifically blood.

"Gustavus," she purred seductively.

He crawled toward her, bleeding, his clothes shredded. Her inviting tone beckoned him, and he responded with a hopeful smile. "Yes, my darling."

The dinosaur bulled past the other man Belle had discarded. The spines on either side of the dinosaur’s top hat glowed orange as a carrot. "Really, Belle. You’ve done more than a miniscule amount of damage already."

"Blame me, of course," she snorted.

"On the other hand, you do bring some needed cachet to the proceedings," the dinosaur replied.

"Speaking of hands," Belle said as she reached for Gustavus’ outstretched arm. She seized his wrist and yanked him closer, dragging his lacerated body across the pavement. He moaned in pain.

"Hush, you," Belle ordered. She unscrewed the fuel cap, then bit off Gustavus’ hand. Blood gushed out, and she hurriedly jammed the bleeding stump into the fuel port. When the blood slowed to a trickle, she said to the dinosaur. "A little help."

He planted a large clawed foot on Gustavus’ lower back and began shifting weight from leg-to-leg to pump more blood out of the dying man. Bones crunched. Gustavus’ eyes rolled back and his mouth gaped in agony.

Belle wrung the last drops of blood from the stump and let the arm fall to the ground. She replaced the fuel cap. One quick tap on the starter button and the scooter buzzed to life.

"Belle, you’re such a hoot," the dinosaur said.

"Likewise, my friend," she replied. "Thanks for the help."

"Where to next?" he asked.

"To get some of those delicious Clementines. After all, they are ribbed for my pleasure."

~   ~   ~   ~   ~

 

Belle stretched against the rumpled sheets. Her iTunes alarm was going off, and she thought about snatches of the weirdest dream ever. Exploding ball bearings? Gustavus LeGume? The Order of the Reptile? She giggled, thinking that she must have pulled the Simpson’s Comic Book Guy out of her subconscious for that one.

Duran Duran wailed into the chorus and she sang along, voice scratchy with sleep: "I’m on the hunt, I’m after you… mouth is alive, juices like wine… and I’m hungry like the wolf…" She gave a thought to the stranger who’d almost kissed her in the dream and wished that the dream had gone a different direction. Then the music changed and she rolled over to turn it off but when she tried to use the touchscreen, her claw cracked the screen. Her … bloodstained ? claw?

The dream-stranger sat perched on dainty slipper chair in her bedroom, absurdly large, watching her. "Perhaps now you’re ready for my help."

Whatever Happened To Candy?

So last Thursday I showed you how I "published" Candy's and Belle's stories for the attendees of the Reading Until Dawn Conference. Those attendees all received their exclusive edition of one of those two amazing stories.

But there's something else they got that you, my readers, did not. If you followed all of those posts, you may be thinking to yourself, "But those stories weren't finished! They totally left me hanging! I really NEEEEEEED to know what happened!"

Now see, if you had come to the conference, you would already have your satisfaction.  But I won't leave you hanging.  Would I do that to you?  So today, here all in one place with no jump links, you can enjoy the story of Our Heroine Candy, with an exclusive ending:


I WANT CANDY


Candy gazed at her dodecahedronical diamond ring and sighed. It really had been sweet of Jace to give it to her, but she just didn't know that the manager of the Alpha club, where she was a stripper, was really the right guy for her long-term. Granted, he had all that lush chest hair that she loved, and those brown eyes the color of burnished copper. But she'd never felt like she'd hit a home-run when they'd had sex. Something was simply missing, and she couldn't put her finger on it (or apparently in it either). Now, staring at her amazing, and really big, ring, she knew the time to make a decision had arrived.


Sighing again, Candy rolled her eyes; decisions were never easy to make. Ever. This life decision seemed like the hardest yet with the variegated sides to it. Sliding the ring on her finger just to see what it would look like, to see how it feels on her finger, Candy smiled. It sure looked good, but could she really marry him? A locker slamming nearby jolts Candy out of her musings and she jerked at the ring to pull it off. Somehow it was stuck. The superb ring that she didn't know if she could really keep since she wasn't sure if she really wanted to marry Jace, was stuck on her finger. Panicking just a bit she whirled to make sure no one was too close, she couldn’t let the word get out yet. Candy ruffled through her own locker and finally she found a bottle of talcum powder and with a bit of a relief she poured it generously on her hand not caring a bit that it fell all over the floor around her. Dropping the bottle she jerked violently at the ring, but it was still stuck. Whimpering a little since she couldn’t keep wearing the blasted thing and her shift started in twenty minutes, she briefly wondered if there was some Crisco lying around somewhere. Her finger started to throb and it seemed as if the ring were getting smaller the more she tugged. She whirled around to try cold water and cames face to chest with a very large, manly, body.


Startled, Candy stumbled a bit and slowly lifted her eyes up the hard packed, tanned, hairy chest, even as she felt large hands on her hips steadying her. Once her eyes reached his, she was gone. His eyes were the most fierce golden color she has ever seen and they were focused entirely on her. Keeping her still while her brain was telling her to run. Holding her breath unable to even form a coherent thought she could only stare at the stranger who seemed to be taking everything in, even the smell of the powder as his nose twitched. Then in a move so sudden and quick Candy was lifted into his strong arms and swept away. She realized she was being taken to a subterranean level after descending multiple stairs. The stranger smelled so wonderful, of dark woods and sunlight… such a compelling combination. The man wasn't even breathing heavily while carrying her, and without meaning to, Candy felt a stirring in her lower abdomen.


Candy's loins may have been awake, but obviously her tongue wasn't. She might have been a natural blonde under that hundred-dollar scarlet dye job, but her brain worked just fine. Either putting on that ring had made her a little bit stupid or she'd been temporarily discombobulated by Mr. Tall, Dark, and Criminal.


"Um. Excuse me?" She writhed, trying to free herself of his grip, and slammed her heels hard against his ribs.


No dice. If it weren't for his low, fierce growl, she would have thought he was completely unbothered.


She'd just have to try harder to get his attention. She wasn't the kind of girl who got carried off willy- nilly into caves by big hulking strangers who smelled like the promise of good sex and breakfast the morning after.


"I'll have you know my fiancé tracks my phone through GPS. You're leading him right to this place."


No response.


Just as well. Jace wouldn't have figured out how to track her phone even if the instructions were printed in little words on the back of a cereal box, and he'd bought the dang thing.


The farther the stranger descended into the cave-like sanctuary, the less light there was. Only his startling, wolf-like eyes were easily visible. She patted his face, found his nose, and gave it a hard, twisting yank.


"Dammit!"


"Oh, so now you talk."


He reached a landing on the long staircase and, tossing her over one broad shoulder, pulled a heavy, old-fashioned door shut, and latched it. "We can talk plenty now. Let's see if we can get that ring off you first, though. We might have a little problem if you told him yes."


Not that she had any intention of saying yes to Jace, but she really didn't like where this was going--especially since the pummeling of her fists on the man's back seemed to be having no effect whatsoever. "What kind of problem?"


"For starters, you're his sister," he responded, his tone so teasing he was almost singing the words.


"His what?"


"Sister."


"That's not possible. And even if it was, how would you possibly know?" She'd been adopted on the other side of the country and Jace had talked about his parents--his birth parents--on more than one occasion. Clearly her captor was full of shit. Candy bit back the curse before she gave it voice and tried a new tactic--kicking the stranger as hard as she could.


Laughing, he gripped her legs tighter and her kicking only served to send one stiletto heel clattering into the darkness. "It's more than possible, you squirmy little fish, it's certain. I only hope you have this much energy once I get you into my bed."


"Your bed? Play me another one, maestro, because there's no way I'm dancing to that song," she said, horrified at the suggestion. She might take her clothes off to make ends meet, but she didn't have sex with strangers--ever--and she'd be damned if she planned to change that rule for the brute holding her hostage, regardless of how good he smelled, much less her body's reaction to his nearness.


"Yes, little one. I'm the one you were promised to, and it will be my bed you lie in on your wedding night."


Unbelievable. A stranger - albeit a drop-dead gorgeous stranger - had taken her underground, and the biggest shock was his arrogance. Once she was out of this situation, Candy made a mental note to have her head examined.


"Excuse me, but I will most certainly not grace your bed. And just where did you get your information?"


His full lips curled up in a sensual smile. "Ah Pet, I had a feeling you'd be curious. I'll bet you were the head of your class in school."


His voice has probably caused millions of panties to go up in flames. She had to resist, and not be silly enough to fall for his sensuality. She looked all around the cavern, and tried to ignore the firm grip of the hands on her thighs.


"Yeah, no shit. You've got me down here in the Bat Cave and Bruce Wayne is nowhere to be found. Not to mention, you're under the false impression that we're going to get married. Now, you're either going to tell me what is going on, or find me a bag of pretzels because I'm starving."


Her captor grinned. He had dimples. This was wrong. Kidnappers should never have dimples. Standing, he reached for a ledge and grabbed a tube. Her eyes gaped as she recognized what was in his hand.


"Just happened to have a bottle of lube laying around?"


"Sure did. My future bride may have a kinky side. But we'll discuss that later. Give me your hand. That ring is going to cut off your circulation."


Reluctantly, she held out her hand. His fingers on hers felt incredible. Distracting herself, she looked down and saw what appeared to be old tracks. Biting back a moan at his touch, she inclined her head to the ground.


"Is this place an old mining shaft?"


Mr. Tall, Dark, and Criminal didn’t respond. He was focused on her finger which was swelling up like a segment of a clementine. So much for golden-eyed men being able to multi-task.


He squeezed the lube onto her finger, slickening the dodecahedronical diamond ring. He tugged, but it wouldn’t come off. She felt it tighten even more. Her arousal had taken a train to Gone-ville and panic had flown in on a red-eye from Cleveland.


He moved away, agile for such a large man. Candy clutched at the ring and tried as hard as she could to pull it off. Both the pain and the frustration made her scream.


Returning to her, the man held a book—well, not just any kind of book, but an ancient leather weather-stained tome. He flipped open to a page, muttered three words, and the ring fell from her finger. Only the ring didn’t fall. It drifted to the floor. She expected to hear it clatter on the stone, but instead, it remained, floating.


Candy watched it, speechless. She wanted to say something flippant, or rib her savior, but all she could do was stand, stunned, as the ring floated above the stone.


“A mine shaft, yes,” the man said. His voice, his presence, brought her back, and she found herself staring into those mesmerizing eyes.


“We of the A’hem search for what was lost but must be found. Just as I found you, you will find your love for me.” He paused. “Princess.”


“You of the A’hem. Not me.” She made a face. “Princess? No, I’m a lot of things, stripper, poet, pastry chef, Mensa member, but I am not a princess.”


“But you are.” He took her hand and rubbed the soreness from her finger. “Lost royalty. And I swore an oath to your real father, before he died, to save you.” “Which means Jace is a prince?” She made another face.


“A fallen prince, yes. He gave you the dodecahedronical ring for a reason. Not to marry you, but to kill you, so he could reign supreme. You see, the A’hem are without king, without queen, and the war with the Nah still rages in worlds unseen by mortals.”


She expected him to smirk. He didn’t.


Breathless, she looked down at the ring, still floating. “You know, I finally realize what that ring looks like. In high school, I played way too much Dungeons and Dragons. That’s a twelve-sided die.”


Candy signed. “Tell me more about the Nah, and the…” she cleared her throat… “A’hem.”


“Funny.” For the first time, Tall, Dark and Prophetic smiled.


When Candy didn’t show for her shift on the pole, Jace’s senses went on high alert. She was a lot of things, but she wasn’t a flake. Her locker was a mess—and mostly empty; she’d left it open and it had been totally ransacked. There was no reason to panic, but every instinct he had was screaming that the A’hem had found her. That asshole A’ron, probably. Who knew what kind of lies he was feeding her even now.


Oh, Jace knew Candy wasn’t for him. That had been made abundantly clear, not least by their failure to connect on a physical level. She’d be their queen, but her true consort will have chosen a different path than Jace. For starters, he’d be purer of heart, mind, and body. He’d have kept celibate, as the old ways required, while Jace been tasked with keeping her safe and hidden from the Nah… and the easiest way to make that happen was to become her significant other, though his role as the slightly bumbling, harmlessly affectionate buddy chafed.


First things first, though. Jace called James on the emergency cell, checked the coordinates coming from the engagement ring, and they teleported directly to the location.


Before Candy could say “dodecahedronical,” Jace plugged A’ron with a taser and James scooped the ring up from its suspended animation. For good measure, he grabbed the spellbook too. At Candy’s expression, Jace shook his head and said, “Did he tell you the one about how I’m your brother?”


She nodded wordlessly.


“God, that guy’s a jerk,” Jace muttered, looking at the golden-eyed dipshit, inert on the stone floor.


“Is… is he going to be ok?” Candy faltered. “Did you…”


“Kill him? Nah,” James snorted at his own joke. “The taser will keep him out cold for an hour or so, though. It scrambles those guys up on a molecular level.”


Candy didn’t know what to believe or what to think. Jace and James had been her friends, and Jace her lover, for years. She knew and trusted them, or she thought she knew them. This other guy was, well, she’d been drawn to him but the attraction suddenly had gone as inert as his frame, as though a magnetic field had powered down. He’d scared the crap out of her, and God, he really had been a jerk.


“Wait.” She pulled a permanent marker out of her purse and wrote “I AM A BIG HUGE JERK” all across her kidnapper’s face. “Call me 'Pet?' Call me ’Little one’? my sweet ass,” she muttered.


“I never said I was mature,” she said, at their mirrored, startled expressions. She capped the marker, took them each regally by an elbow, and said, “Let’s go. You need to tell me about this whole Queen of the Nah gig.”

 ======================================

OK, so it's somewhat of an open-ended ending. Maybe if you think of it as a prologue. I like to think that Candy went on to rule the Nah and to find that consort with the soul-deep, white hot connection; while the A'Hem took some remedial lessons on feminism. Once more, I'd like to thank the awesome authors who worked on this story: Selena Laurence, Chelsea O'Neal, Holley Trent, Seleste DeLaney, Candace Blackburn, and Aaron Michael Ritchey. The final ending was written by a reclusive, anonymous author with no writing credentials whatsoever.

Oh, and because I have 80s lyrics in my head pretty much all the time, this is where the title came from (no extra charge for the earworm):

Flash Fiction Special Feature!

When I see this author at the Reading Until Dawn Conference, I'm going in for the full-contact hug (you've been warned, Mr. Ritchey!)  He gave me a chapter for BOTH #TeamBelle AND #TeamCandy!  That's some serious commitment right there.

For all the author-profile-ish low-down on Ritchey, hopefully you saw yesterday's post.  Today, we're following up the adventures of Candy, whose world just keeps getting weirder.


You can find Candy's backstory at these links:

Part 1 from Selena Laurence,
Part 2 from Chelsea O'Neal
Part 3 from Holley Trent
Part 4 from Seleste DeLaney  

And the challenge words from Candace Blackburn are:  drift, segment, ribbed, slick and clementine. 

P5 (and all that jive):

Mr. Tall, Dark, and Criminal didn’t respond. He was focused on her finger which was swelling up like a segment of a clementine. So much for golden-eyed men being able to multi-task.

He squeezed the lube onto her finger, slickening the dodecahedronical diamond ring. He tugged, but it wouldn’t come off. She felt it tighten even more. Her arousal had taken a train to Gone-ville and panic had flown in on a red-eye from Cleveland.

He moved away, agile for such a large man. Candy clutched at the ring and tried as hard as she could to pull it off. Both the pain and the frustration made her scream.

Returning to her, the man held a book—well, not just any kind of book, but an ancient leather weather-stained tome. He flipped open to a page, muttered three words, and the ring fell from her finger. Only the ring didn’t fall. It drifted to the floor. She expected to hear it clatter on the stone, but instead, it remained, floating.

Candy watched it, speechless. She wanted to say something flippant, or rib her savior, but all she could do was stand, stunned, as the ring floated above the stone.

“A mine shaft, yes,” the man said. His voice, his presence, brought her back, and she found herself staring into those mesmerizing eyes.

“We of the A’hem search for what was lost but must be found. Just as I found you, you will find your love for me.” He paused. “Princess.”

“You of the A’hem. Not me.” She made a face. “Princess? No, I’m a lot of things, stripper, poet, pastry chef, Mensa member, but I am not a princess.”

“But you are.” He took her hand and rubbed the soreness from her finger. “Lost royalty. And I swore an oath to your real father, before he died, to save you.”

“Which means Jace is a prince?” She made another face.

“A fallen prince, yes. He gave you the dodecahedronical ring for a reason. Not to marry you, but to kill you, so he could reign supreme. You see, the A’hem are without king, without queen, and the war with the Nah still rages in worlds unseen by mortals.”

She expected him to smirk. He didn’t.

Breathless, she looked down at the ring, still floating. “You know, I finally realize what that ring looks like. In high school, I played way too much Dungeons and Dragons. That’s a twelve-sided die.”

Candy signed. “Tell me more about the Nah, and the…” she cleared her throat… “A’hem.”

“Funny.” For the first time, Tall, Dark and Prophetic smiled.

A'hem. Nah. And he got my D&D die reference (yes, I donated the first 5 words). I'm having a moment here.

Alright then.  If THAT doesn't make you want to come to the Reading Until Dawn Con, I'm not sure we want you there.

If you'd like to see more of Ritchey's work, you know the drill: check the website, then head for Amazon or the retailer of your choice.

If you'd like to influence the next authors, vote for #TeamCandy or #TeamBelle, either on Twitter or here in comments!

=====================================

Are you registered for Reading Until Dawn Con? 

If not, why not?! Join us for fun, games, snacks and possibly pants-optional dancing.  

Register here, and see you there!

Be sure to keep up with all things Reading Until Dawn, by following it via your own personal social media drug of choice: Facebook |Twitter | Google+ | Up All Night Reading Challenge | Pinterest | Tumblr | RSVP at the Facebook Event.

Reading Until Dawn Featured Author: Aaron Ritchey

BUT WAIT THERE'S MORE... 
of the Reading Until Dawn Con author features here at Alpha Heroes.  

Some bloggers could probably manage to keep a very even cadence of author profiles, reliably posting on certain days of the week, consistently and regularly like a drumbeat.

So, yeah, that's not this blogger.  As you may have surmised.  Around here, we like things a little more unpredictable.  A little more spontaneous.  A little less formal.  We had a bit of a break, but there's a nice roster of fantastic authors lining up to play with us here at Alpha Heroes.  We'll be publishing these features as they come in, as various schedules allow, so keep an eye out in your feed and check in regularly!

As a Featured Blogger (ahem) for the Reading Until Dawn conference, it is my pleasure and my sacred responsibility to showcase the delightful authors that will be hanging out and playing embarrassing SUPER FUN AND AWESOME games with us in October.  We're not doing panels.  We're not doing pitches. We're seriously not doing serious. We WILL be doing games.

If you've read Alpha Heroes for very long, you know I'm not too into author interviews. I'm not very good at them, to be honest. So just pretend this is a game instead of an interview.  I gave my authors a Mad Libs^TM style questionnaire, and here are the results!  (note: truthiness is optional... these are fiction writers after all!)

Please welcome Aaron M. Ritchey, self-described gamma hero (what exactly does that MEAN?) and sushi lover.  I stole this from his "About Me" page, and I defy you to read it and NOT want to come party with this guy:

When anyone asked what I wanted to be when I grew up, the answer was the same: a writer.  On the first day of kindergarten, when I figured out they weren’t going to teach me to read that first hour, I packed up my stuff and walked home.  Cut school on the first day of kindergarten.  That’s how I roll.

Come on now. You know you want to.

The Reading Until Dawn Con is different from typical fan conferences in that it will feature tons of games.  So here are my game-themed questions (truthiness is optional).  

1. No one ever beats me at the game of __Murder. Murder most foul.____.  I, uh, that's like a role-play thing, right? 

2. Please fill in these blanks: "When I was a kid, and they were picking teams for sportball, I was usually:
a) picked right away
b) not picked right away (Never picked. Always spurned. Why, God, why?)
c) one of the captains   Later in life, I found myself __typing “Murder Most Foul” for alphaheroes.net , which I swear was meant to be funny…or was it? __, and I think it was all because of how the sportball teams were picked. Oh yes! SUPER-funny!    

3. The most embarrassing/hilarious game I ever participated in was _underwater naked monopoly _.  Everyone was laughing at _...Laughter? There was no laughter. When I play underwater naked monopoly, I play for keeps. It’s the most dangerous of games.   I see.  Was I laughing? I didn't mean to laugh. I would never laugh.   

4. In an alternate universe, I am George R. R. Martin, only my fabulously successful 700-page epic book is titled "Game of _Self-Pity_." it is about _The lives of several writers, all living a long, long time._  Well.  That sounds... long.  Franzen-esque, perhaps even.  

5. Once,  Mario Acevedo suggested that we take over Uraguay and rule the peoples as benevolent dictators during the day and poet kings at night, and I could only respond, GAME. ON.  Then what happened? All was going well until Mario was bit by a bat and turned into a vampire. I woke up to find him drinking my blood via the heel of my left foot. I shooed him away, and he took off on a motor scooter screaming, “I am THE Felix Gomez! I live! I live!” Right.  I... I've got nothing.

6. Would you like to play the 5-words game? HIT ME!  OK, well there's no need for violence.

The 5-words game rules:

The lovely Candace Blackburn challenges you to use the following 5 words in a piece of flash fiction, as long or short as you wish. Don't overthink it :-)

Then, give 5 words for the next victim, er, interviewee to use.  They will have the option to build on your piece or do a stand-alone.

Your words are:  _drift, segment, ribbed, slick and clementine._

  
Meet Belle, P1 from Roselynn Cannes
And THEN this happened, P2 from Katee Robert

P3:

“Going somewhere in a hurry?”

Belle’s heart fell to her ankles. Not today, please, not today. She hurried on, hoping to appear she hadn’t heard him. Maybe, this time, he wouldn’t harass her. No such luck.

Gustavus LeGume drifted over to her, then matched her pace. His long legs fell in tromping boots. His hair didn’t move, too slicked, too black, too shiny--freshly washed and even more freshly combed. He whirled in front of her, stopping her march.

“You are such a strange girl, Belle, and yet, I am inexplicably drawn to you. Would you like some of my forbidden fruit?”

She wanted to growl. Actually, she wanted to bite.

He shoved a segment of an orange fruit into her face. “It is a ribbed clementine. For your pleasure.”

Her first instinct was to slap the fruit away, punch him in the face, and run. Yet, she had to remain the unassuming maiden everyone expected her to be, however different she was. Any attention she drew to herself might be dangerous.

Belle sighed and said, “Oh Gustavus, I wish I could, but of course, since I’m an unassuming maiden, I must always be limiting what I eat. For after all, a comely face requires a trim figure.”

“Of course.” His knowing nod made her want to rip the lungs from his chest, fill them up with air, and parade the grisly balloons around as an example to others. Where did such thoughts come from? She knew. All too well.

She had to get away from Gustavus and get to the willow by the church as quickly and as demurely as possible. One thing about her monthly escapades—she didn’t have to be so horrifying demure. She could horrifying in other ways. 

Wow.  Kind of hilarious, kind of grisly.... I think I like love it.  *giggles* LeGume. heheheh.

If you'd like to see more of Ritchey's work, you know the drill: check the website, then head for Amazon or the retailer of your choice.

Come back tomorrow to see what he does with Candy...  That's right, we have a two-fer from this author.  Can't wait!

=====================================

Are you registered for Reading Until Dawn Con? 

If not, why not?! Join us for fun, games, snacks and possibly pants-optional dancing.  

Register here, and see you there!

Be sure to keep up with all things Reading Until Dawn, by following it via your own personal social media drug of choice: Facebook |Twitter | Google+ | Up All Night Reading Challenge | Pinterest | Tumblr | RSVP at the Facebook Event.