Blood Trade: Chapter 8 Excerpt

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When she had finished with her last article of clothing, her tie, she spotted the large manila envelope on the bed.  It was supposedly important enough for him to come back to the room for.  Opening it, she found half a dozen 8×10 reproductions of very old black and white photographs.  The first one featured a man standing next to an old time car.  Xochitl didn’t know anything about cars, but she recognized the man immediately.  It was Israel, the vampire.  He had shoulder length wavy hair and his trademark van dyke.

“When was this taken?”

“1926,” replied Dominic, standing up and walking over.  He pointed at the car.  “That’s a 1926 Pontiac Series 6.  And you see who that is?”

“Yes.  Israel, or Leopold Sansonne, as he was known then.”

“Wow,” said the FBI agent.  “How long have you known his name?  I just got that bit of information last night while you were asleep.”

Xochitl shrugged and flipped to the next picture.  It was a group shot.  It was three men she didn’t recognize along with the same vampire.  The next one was more of the same.  The fifth picture was Israel with an unknown dark-haired woman.  It was pointless looking at any more of the photos.  She didn’t know any of the people in them.  She started to shove them back in the envelope, but quickly scanned the last two anyway.  One of them stood out immediately and she grasped both edges, letting the rest of the 8x10s fall to the floor.  This picture was of Israel standing in front of a café of some sort with a short woman.  Wearing a knee length dress and a long string of pearls, she looked the part of a classic 1920s flapper.  Though her blond hair was cut into a cute little bob, she was easily recognizable—Novelyne.

“I knew she knew him,” said Xochitl.

“You might have given me either of those tidbits.”

“I don’t…”  She stopped and tugged on her lip ring with her tongue for a moment, trying to think of the right thing to say.  She had almost said, “I don’t know you well enough to hand over that kind of information to you.”  But that made her sound like a slut, because she apparently did know him well enough to jump into bed with him.  “I haven’t had a chance to tell you.”

The Problem with Children

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I’m working hard on The Young Sorceress, revising the part that I’ve already written.  I’ve discovered something.  I’ve written the kids in the story too old.  They are supposed to be 5, 2, and 1 and they’re talking like frickin’ geniuses.   One of those kids is going to grow up to be a college professor, and the other two have big destinies awaiting them too, but they’ve still got to be children for a while.  Oh well, that’s why we have revision.

Smashwords – iBooks

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Mark Coker of Smashwords made a couple of exciting announcements this week.  One was that iBooks recently opened to 26 new countries.
Austria
Belgium
Bulgaria
Cyprus
Czech Republic
Denmark
Estonia
Finland
Greece
Hungary
Ireland
Italy
Latvia
Lithuania
Luxembourg
Malta
Netherlands
Norway
Poland
Portugal
Romania
Slovakia
Slovenia
Spain
Sweden
Switzerland
As he pointed out, Europe is a growth area for ebooks.
Secondly he announced that iBooks had their single best day for Smashwords titles on 10/9/11.  I am excited to see what this means for my books, as iBooks has been my best selling outlet and I’m anxious to see sales on Women of Power and Blood Trade.

Blood Trade: Chapter 7 Excerpt

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Xochitl walked up Second Street and crossed Clark, only a few blocks from home, when she heard it—the cry of the wolf.  No, no, no, no; that wasn’t right.  The last night of the full moon had been the previous night.  It couldn’t be a werewolf.  The howl came again.  It couldn’t have been more than two hundred yards away— just to the north and east of her.  Damn it all to hell.  She hadn’t brought any silver rounds with her.  Why would she?  She heard the wolf howl again.  It was subtly different.  It was hunting now.  It had found prey.

She sprinted a hundred yards to the front of the Catholic Church, where she stopped and stared.  Even in the light of the single street lamp and the sodium bulb attached to the building just below the large cross, she could see wave upon wave of yellow and purple flowers across the newly planted beds in front of the church.  Ranunculus: a mixture Buttercup and Monkshood.  What idiot gardener had planted them?  Normally landscapers in Vegas put out little flowering annuals right about now.  No sense spending a lot of money, because the plants would wither under the desert’s summer sun.  But Ranunculus were perennials, so while they would grow just fine in the springtime here, it was just wasteful to see them dry up and die in July.  And who would plant Monkshood in a churchyard?  Monkshood, also called Aconite, Devil’s Helmet, Blue Rocket, Leopard’s Bane, Women’s Bane… Wolfsbane.

There was a scream!  It was right around the corner.  Xochitl raced as fast as she could around the building.  Her pistol was in her hand even before her mind registered that a werewolf was standing in front of her.  It was not in its wolf form, nor in its human form.  It was in that half humanoid, crouched shape that made it seem like a refugee from a B movie.  With horribly misshapen limbs and patchy fur, it gave impression of disease or… a curse.  Its long snout dripped saliva down upon the body of a woman lying below it. 

Skidding to a stop on grass still wet from the night time sprinkler, she emptied all seven rounds into the werewolf.  Glocks were great for shooting at convenience store robbers, but when you wanted stopping power, nothing beat a .45.  The wolf staggered back three steps.  He took one step forward again as Xochitl dropped the clip to the ground and slammed another into place.  Seven more shots right into its body.  The creature fell to the ground.  It looked at her and roared, not very wolf-like but scary as shit.  Then as the Goth detective shoved her last clip in and pressed the slide stop with her thumb, the beast jumped to its feet and turning, loped away, up Bridger Avenue.

Xochitl watched it go as she walked over to the woman lying prone.  She kept an eye on it until it turned off into an alley and out of view.  Then she reached down and rolled the woman onto her back.  She was a pretty woman about Xochitl’s age—probably a tourist who had wandered too far away from the lights of downtown.   She had several deep scratches across her face and probably on her body, if her torn clothes were any indication, but when Xochitl checked, she had a strong pulse.  Pulling her phone from her pocket, she called 911 and asked for an ambulance.

Update: The Young Sorceress

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I just read the portion of The Young Sorceress that I wrote last year (about 27,000) words and I’m reworking the plot for the rest of the story.  What I originally thought was a single very complex plot, I now see as several different intertwining stories.  It’s much different than the other Senta and the Steel Dragon books.  One thing is for sure– I won’t have this story done by the end of the year.  I of course will update you as I go along.

Astrid Maxxim Update

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Late last night, I finished the first draft of Astrid Maxxim.  It was about as close to the original outline as any book I’ve ever written.  It was plotted at 30,000 words and came out at 30,284.  As always, things change when I start to rewrite, but I’m setting it aside for a bit before revising.  Now back to Senta and the Steel Dragon Book 4: The Young Sorceress.

Blood Trade: Chapter 6 Excerpt

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“I can take care of both those jobs this evening,” suggested Novelyne.  “That is, if you have other things to do.  I really, really like the Lanks.  I think they’re really, really nice—both of them.”

“You don’t really, really like them.”

“Why do you keep saying that?”

“You can’t like them,” said Xochitl turning around.  “You can’t like, love, admire, or care about anyone.  You don’t have it in you.  You’re heart doesn’t beat.  You’re a damned, dead thing.  The only thing you feel is that certain attraction that a predator has for its prey.  You play with your food like a cat plays with a mouse, like a shark plays with a seal, tossing it in the air, and having fun with it, and then tearing it apart.  You vampires beguile your victims with grotesque little pantomimes as lovers or even friends.  You become fascinated with them, but only until you suck the last of their lives away.”

“You don’t know anything about it.” 

“I know too much about it,” hissed Xochitl.

“You see what you want to see!” shouted Novelyne, her face masked in anger, but staying in its human form.  “You don’t know what I feel.  I’m still me.  I’m me!  You don’t know what I feel.  … The predator’s fascination with its prey…  At least that’s a feeling!  At least I feel something!  You don’t feel anything at all!”

She turned on her heel and started down the stairs.

“I’m leaving.”

“The sun hasn’t gone down yet.”

“It’s dark enough for me!”

The slamming door announced that Novelyne was no longer in the office.

Blood Trade: Chapter Five Excerpt

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The Lank home looked just as Xochitl had left it.  She paid the little cab driver with the unpronounceable name, including his big tip, and watched the vehicle drive away before approaching the house.  Rather than go to the front door, she opened the side gate and stepped quietly up to a kitchen window.  Looking inside, she didn’t see Novelyne or either of the Lanks, but nothing seemed out of place.  She continued on.  The Lanks had a beautifully landscaped back yard, with a large pool fed by a waterfall.  Just as Xochitl was rounding the back corner of the house, she heard a noise from across the yard.  She dropped to her knees.

At the back edge of the yard was a garden shed, and right beside that was a metal gate in the cinder block wall that surrounded the property.  As she watched, the gate opened just wide enough to admit a person, and one after the other, three passed through.  The last closed the gate behind him.  They crossed toward the house, stepping past the waterfall and into the light streaming out from the large double-paned windows.  All three men appeared to be in their late twenties or early thirties.  All three had pistols, two still had them in their belt holsters; one carried his in his left hand.  This meant they wouldn’t be vampires.  Vampires didn’t need to carry firearms.

“Freeze,” said Xochitl from her kneeling position.

The man with the gun raised it and fired.  The bullet whizzed by close enough to her head that it brushed her hair.  She shot him twice in the chest.  Without pause, she shot the second man twice above his right eye.  He hadn’t quite reached the hand grip of his weapon.  The third man had.  He managed to raise it halfway before she shot him twice, one bullet hitting lower than intended, a gut shot, but the second right through the heart. 

Xochitl stood up before she realized that the first man was still standing.  He had two bullet holes through his chest, but he raised his gun again.  She shot him twice in the face and then emptied her clip into his body.  Though he staggered backwards, he still didn’t go down.  A growl brought her attention to his face.  It had a grotesque hole in the forehead, but that wasn’t the most disturbing thing about it.  It had shifted to the face of the blood-sucking fiend, with long fangs and yellow eyes.  Alright, so don’t make generalizations.  Vampires might carry guns after all.

The vampire fired his pistol twice more and Xochitl felt a burning pain shoot through her right side.  Casting the gun aside, he leapt at her.  She darted forward spinning into a flying back kick, making contact with his face, and sending a stream of blood and brains from the hole in his head in an arc across the back yard.  He hardly seemed to notice.  Grabbing her foot from the air, he threw her down, knocking the wind from her lungs.

Kindle Fire

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A few days ago, Amazon announced its new Kindle Fire tablet.  It looks pretty amazing, especially for the price of $199.  I suppos the real test of how great a buy it is will be how easy it is to add content that doesn’t come from Amazon.  It only has 8g of storage vs. unlimited cloud storage for your Amazon purchases.

It’s all up-side for me though.  The more people who have Amazon ereaders, the more potential customers that are out there.  If you get yourself a new Kindle Fire, check out one of my books from the Kindle Store.  I think the cover of Blood Trade will look particularly good on this device with its black border.