As promised earlier this month, today, I’m spotlighting Karina Fabian’s latest DragonEye story, the novella Greater Treasures.

Being a private detective in the border town of the Faerie and Mundane worlds isn’t easy, even for a dragon like Vern. Still, finding the wayward brother of a teary damsel in distress shouldn’t have gotten so dangerous. When his partner, Sister Grace, gets poisoned by a dart meant for him, Vern offers to find an artifact in exchange for a cure. However, this is no ordinary trinket—with a little magic power, it could control all of mankind. Can Vern find the artifact, and will he sacrifice the fate of two worlds for the life of his best friend?

To begin with, this novella is more serious than the earlier DragonEye novels. Yes, Vern still has his wry humor (I was particularly amused by the filet minion line), but he doesn’t find nearly as much funny when his partner’s lying in the hospital, dying. So the tone’s slightly different.

However, if you are a fan of classic movies — specifically, if you love The Maltese Falcon, which this novella is based on, you will love it. The homage to the Falcon is even remarked upon in the novella itself, with (for example) a mention of how Cambridge Ramada is reminiscent of Sydney Greenstreet playing Casper Gutman.

The novella highlights some of the tension between Faerie and Mundane, as well as showing that bigotry and prejudice don’t have a magic cure. Some of the characters are old and familiar; some, this is the first time they’re seen. All fit well in the world Karina Fabian has created, wher St. George really did defeat a dragon, on the other side of the Interdimensional Gap.

It’s a quick read and an enjoyable one, and it’s definitely going on my short list for Hugo nominations next year.

If you haven’t already become acquainted with Vern and his human partner, Sister Grace, you can find Greater Treasures in Kindle and print formats.

Information on the novels in the series can be found at the following links:
Live and Let Fly, which is discussed here on my blog.
Magic, Mensa and Mayhem, which is also reviewed here on my blog.

If you’d like to see more of Vern and Karina’s posts, as well as enter drawings for e-books, check out the rest of the book tour.

Originally published at Erin M. Hartshorn. You can comment here or there.

As promised earlier this month, today, I’m spotlighting Karina Fabian’s latest DragonEye story, the novella Greater Treasures.

Being a private detective in the border town of the Faerie and Mundane worlds isn’t easy, even for a dragon like Vern. Still, finding the wayward brother of a teary damsel in distress shouldn’t have gotten so dangerous. When his partner, Sister Grace, gets poisoned by a dart meant for him, Vern offers to find an artifact in exchange for a cure. However, this is no ordinary trinket—with a little magic power, it could control all of mankind. Can Vern find the artifact, and will he sacrifice the fate of two worlds for the life of his best friend?

And now for a few words from the dragon himself:

Vern’s Warehouse Dogs
By Karina Fabian

I have dogs. I know that sounds weird for a dragon. I never had dogs before I came to the Mundane world. Even among humans, dogs don’t have the status in Faerie that they do here. But I’ve found them to be useful creatures.

While my warehouse is a reasonably comfortable lair, it’s not what I’m used to. Too many entrance points, too exposed. Too many humans–even worse, too many Mundane humans who don’t know how to respect the dragon. Sneaking in for a photo, hoping to swipe a scale, or thinking I’m going to leave my treasure nice and exposed–seriously? (Not that it’s not a good idea, but since my run-in with St. George, I’m not allowed to trick and eat treasure-hunters.) Nice thing about a mountain cave is I can find a quiet spot where I can let my guard down. Not so with the warehouse, but with a dog to keep watch, I can relax knowing that they’ll sound the alarm should any Mundane try to sneak around.

Hot Dog came with the warehouse. He was a nasty piece of work, made meaner by the months of neglect that followed the death of his master–the only human able to control him. The owner’s wife gave the warehouse and all its items to the Church in part because she didn’t want to deal with the mongrel, but couldn’t bear to have it “put down.” Guess she hoped for a miracle. She got me. A few minutes with his neck between my jaws and we came to an understanding. After that, he picked up fast that any human I respected, he’d better respect, too. We had a good year together before I ate him. (It was early in my career and cases were few and far between. Like I said, Hot Dog and I had an understanding.)

Now I have a couple of Labradorish mutts, Riff and Raff. They have a big bark, but friendly temperaments. Back when I didn’t have reliable heat, we kept each other warm on winter nights. More prosperous times and the fact that Grace loves them mean they’ve stayed off my menu for the past ten years. They’re getting gray around the muzzle. I may have to eat them someday, but when I do, it’ll be an honor and not just a luncheon.

If you haven’t already become acquainted with Vern and his human partner, Sister Grace, you can find Greater Treasures in Kindle and print formats.

Information on the novels in the series can be found at the following links:
Live and Let Fly, which is discussed here on my blog.
Magic, Mensa and Mayhem, which is also reviewed here on my blog.

Stay tuned later today for my review of Greater Treasures!

If you’d like to see more of Vern and Karina’s posts, as well as enter drawings for e-books, check out the rest of the book tour.

Originally published at Erin M. Hartshorn. You can comment here or there.

As I mentioned yesterday, Laura Eno’s new book, Jewel of Shaylar (Book One of the Kingdoms of Chandra), launched this week.

Archaeologist David Alexander investigates the cave where his father disappeared and hurtles into another world, one filled with magic and bizarre creatures. The mad ravings in his father’s journals of icemen and dragons may not be fantasies after all.
Convinced his father may still be alive, David begins a treacherous journey to find him and discover a way home. Along the way, he encounters a few unlikely friends. A Dreean warrior, a beautiful thief and a satyr join him as he searches.
David’s arrival into this new world sets off an explosive chain reaction of events. Faced with powerful adversaries and few clues, he may not get the chance to rescue his father before disaster strikes, condemning both of them to death. Or worse.

Read an excerpt on Laura’s Website

Purchase at:

KindleUS
KindleUK
Nook
Smashwords
Kobo
Trade Paperback

Add to your Goodreads

Originally published at Erin M. Hartshorn. You can comment here or there.

To My Mother
by Christina Rossetti

To-day’s your natal day;
Sweet flowers I bring:
Mother, accept, I pray
My offering.

And may you happy live,
And long us bless;
Receiving as you give
Great happiness. ( Read the rest of this entry »Collapse )

Originally published at Erin M. Hartshorn. You can comment here or there.

Five More Minutes

Liam listened to the spiel on the time-travel devices absently. He was only here because of Robin, who said he was too scared to do anything outside his pampered enclave. “You’ve never gone beyond the gates, even for schooling.” He’d show her. He wasn’t afraid — there was just nothing in the current world of any real interest.

Had it been a set-up, all along? He didn’t think she’d mentioned time-travel, but when he arrived at the sales floor, the salesman seemed to expect him, even calling him by name. Maybe that was just part of the mystique — send the records from the end of each day back to the start. It was a neat trick, anyway.

The salesman fixed earnest blue eyes on Liam. He looked vaguely familiar, which probably meant Liam had run into his family in the enclave, even if Liam hadn’t met the salesman himself. With that chin, the salesman might even be a cousin Liam had never met. “You’re sure you understand how the recall works? And the time-delay circuit?”

Liam stifled a yawn. There were exactly three buttons on the device — go, recall, and delay. Go sent him into the past, recall returned him if he wanted to come back sooner than programmed, and delay extended the duration in the past. Simple. He could have operated this when he was still a toddler. “I’m sure.”

“I have to ask,” the salesman said apologetically. “There are rules.”

Of course there were.

“Don’t worry. I’ll be back in a jiffy.”

#

Now he thought back on that encounter. He hadn’t expected to fall in love while in the past. He’d never heard of such a thing. Yet here he was on a bench in New York’s Central Park, watching joggers and dog-walkers pass, waiting for Angela, and worrying about how long he had.

The programmed return time from the past wasn’t always convenient — it would never do for a traveler to disappear in front of people. Hence the time-delay circuit. The device would vibrate and flash a minute or two before recall, giving the traveler enough time to press the delay button if necessary.

Liam had already delayed twice. He wasn’t ready to leave Angela; he wasn’t sure he ever would be.

He should have paid more attention to the details. Now he turned over the device in his pocket, trying to remember how the failsafe worked, how long he could continue to delay.

“Liam?”

He’d been distracted, hadn’t noticed Angela’s approach. He stood up to greet her, smiling as he met her cerulean eyes. “Sorry, my sweet. I was just thinking about the future.”

Her perfectly arched brow raised. “Oh?”

She was too much of a lady to ask whether that future included her.

In his pocket, the device vibrated again. Liam slipped his hand around the device and pressed the time-delay button for the third time. Just a little longer.

The metal crumpled in his hand. He pulled it out and looked at it.

“What’s that?” Angela asked.

He shook his head and tossed it into the trash can next to the bench. “Nothing.”

That was what he’d missed in the salesman’s speech — the device wouldn’t work indefinitely. He’d have to leave an “I told you so” letter in trust for Robin to read. Later. Right now, he had exactly what he wanted — more time.

The rest of his life with Angela.

– THE END –

570 words

My blog is participating in the Forward Motion Flash Friday Blog Group, a weekly flash fiction exercise (not that I’m managing weekly!). Check out the other participating blogs for more flash.

This week’s flash was inspired by my desire to stay in bed this morning. (Of course.)

Originally published at Erin M. Hartshorn. You can comment here or there.

I’ve got lots of thing in progress. Recently, in fact, I remembered a couple of series I started plotting out but hadn’t started writing. Things are moving along, not quite glacially, but certainly slower this year than in previous years.

So this month, I’m taking a break. Maybe it seems counter-intuitive: if I’m going slowly, won’t things be even worse if I turn my back on my current projects? Well, frankly, it won’t make a lot of difference to most of them. However, I think I need a change of pace, doing something different.

Forward Motion (the writing forum I’ve been hanging out at since 2003) runs a challenge every May called Story-A-Day, or SAD. I’ve never gotten more than ten stories in the month, and some years, I haven’t even gotten one. This year, though, I’m going for full-out insanity. I may not actually complete a story each day — on days that I do flash, I might finish two; other stories might take me a few days to draft. I would like to finish the month with 31 new stories, of whatever length. Some of those will go up as Friday flash, fresh and new and straight to you, my readers. Others will get spell-checked, read to make sure they make sense, edited if necessary, and submitted to varying markets.

I may not get all 31. I’d like to get between 25 and 31, but the truth is, even if I “only” finish the month with five new shorts plus the Friday flash pieces, I’ll be ahead of where I am now.

That’s my current project.

What are you up to this month?

Today’s post was inspired by the topic “Current projects”– May’s topic in the Merry-Go-Round Blog Tour — an ongoing tour where you, the reader, travel around the world from author’s blog to author’s blog. We have all sorts of writers at all stages in their writing career, so there’s something for everyone to enjoy. Be sure to check out the next posts in the series, by Sandra Barret and D. M. Bonnano.

If you want to get to know nearly twenty other writers and find out their thoughts on first stories, check out the Merry-Go-Round Blog Tour. You can find links to all of the posts on the tour by checking out the group site. Read and enjoy!

Originally published at Erin M. Hartshorn. You can comment here or there.

Mourning Bird

I was born beneath a black veil of mourning, a dark bud blooming deep in its shadow. The house had burned down years past, possibly decades or even longer, but Mother couldn’t tell me, her sense of time being . . . well, hers. The garden had fallen into disarray, formerly neat hedges become impenetrable thickets, and onions bearing giant purple globes where they had been allowed to go to seed. Into this, then, was I born, a child of the dark, the sorrow of not belonging bred into my bones, which wept with the sound of water trickling down a broken redbrick wall.

When I reckoned myself an adult, I tried to leave, but the iron of the gates held me as tight as any shackle, though they lay broken across the drive. Father told me it was not so much the metal of them as the symbol, that that was how mankind had always bound us, with sign and symbol, through the magic of words that held no magic.

- But why? Why? They are gone, dead and gone, burned and lost and scattered to the winds! Why cannot we go as well?

- Somewhere, they are not gone. Somewhere, they still call this home, though they may never have seen it. So long as their blood beats in their veins, so long does it bind us here.

- It isn’t fair! They don’t even want us any more!

Fair or not, it was the way of our life and I could not leave. I had already explored the garden, every inch, every speck, every pebble, every decaying rib of leaf in the fall. I knew the land, knew its ways, the thoughts of the trees, the whispers of the breezes, the drifts of snow that melted last in spring. I realized I would become like my mother, one with the land, no memory or separation of time, if I could not escape. There was only one other thing to try.

No one had ever forbidden me to enter the ruined house. As far as I knew, Mother saw it still clothed in flames, and Father — he probably assumed I wouldn’t want to. I was bound to the land, after all. What could something set apart in such a way have to offer me?

But it wasn’t set apart any more. Brambles grew through into what had been the kitchen, birds nested atop tottering walls, and I knew at least one fox family had a den in the basement. The house had become an extension of the garden, and I had become old enough to claim it as my own.

I entered through the front, dancing along the rose petals that drifted through space once filled — with a window, a wall? Mother would know, but she wouldn’t understand why I asked — but now bereft of anything but drifting dirt, charred timbers, and plants reclaiming the land. I felt the threshold as I crossed it, a thought, a line, a “this is home” feeling of belonging that sealed in as effectively as did the iron gates — but it was too late for me to go back. I was admitted into the house, but it had claimed me.

How long, I wondered, would humans consider this their place? How long before the blood diluted and set us free? Too long, I knew. I would be one with these walls, drawing the veil of mourning deeper about myself, and lose myself more completely than even Mother had.

I sat down on a pile of leaves to watch the sunset through the broken walls. The ghost of a sparrow flitted through one wall and out the other.

– THE END –

608 words

My blog is participating in the Forward Motion Flash Friday Blog Group, a weekly flash fiction exercise (not that I’m managing weekly!). Check out the other participating blogs for more flash.

This week’s flash was inspired by a flash fiction challenge on Chuck Wendig’s blog, “Choose Your Opening Line.” In fact, I chose two lines, one for the beginning and one for the ending:

I was born beneath a black veil of mourning, a dark bud blooming deep in its shadow. — 
Gina Herron

The ghost of a sparrow flitted through one wall and out the other.
 — CJ Eggett

Originally published at Erin M. Hartshorn. You can comment here or there.

My head is suffering from all the pollen in the air, and the brief showers we’ve gotten don’t seem to be removing any of the offending particles, but the neighborhood is pretty to look at. I took some photos in the yard this morning, and now I’m sharing them with you. ( Read the rest of this entry »Collapse )

Originally published at Erin M. Hartshorn. You can comment here or there.

Neat Freak

Once upon a time, there was an organized young woman. She always brushed and flossed twice a day, precisely at 7 o’clock. Every dish was washed and put away immediately after being used. Her closet was organized both alphabetically (the shoe styles) and by color (everything else). And, of course, her taxes were always filed by 5 p.m. on January 31 (earlier if she had all the paperwork).

Her neighbors muttered and moaned. “She makes us all look bad.” But what could they do? An audit wouldn’t faze this woman. There must be something! They labored to summon a demon, a fairy, anyone who could help them.

Which is when my muse stepped in and said, “Clearly a fictional character. No one will ever miss her,” and fed her to the kraken in the basement.

The neighbors celebrated their freedom from feeling inferior . . . until they realized that if she was fictional, then so were they. Like Douglas Adams’s God, they disappeared in a puff of logic.

– THE END –

162 words

My blog is participating in the Forward Motion Flash Friday Blog Group, a weekly flash fiction exercise (not that I’m managing weekly!). Check out the other participating blogs for more flash.

Why yes, I am still working on my taxes.

Originally published at Erin M. Hartshorn. You can comment here or there.

Neither One Thing, Nor Another

Gillian shushed Hal as they climbed into the rickety treehouse. She’d outgrown the play area years ago, so she’d thought, but now, as Hal wrapped his arms around her waist, she thought that it did still have its uses.

“We have to be quiet, or Aunt Ruth will hear.”

He nuzzled her neck. “I thought you said her name was Rosa.”

“Sometimes it is.” She twisted away to look at him. “I’m serious. You don’t want her mad at you.”

He laughed loudly. “What’s she going to do, turn me into a frog?”

“That would be too easy.” The quiet voice came from a dark corner. “She’s more likely to turn you into something that isn’t, or isn’t always. Do you think I was always a shadow?”

Hal snorted, let go of Gillian, and strode to the corner — no doubt to prove that there was nothing mysterious going on. When he got there, he started poking around. “All right, where’s the hidden speaker?”

Gillian just shook her head.

“You know, Gillian, if you didn’t want to do this, you could have just said so.” He pushed past her to the ladder and quickly descended.

She watched him go, torn between tears and rage. A hand settled on her shoulder, and she spun around. “How could you do this to me?”

“At least I didn’t actually hurt him.” Aunt Ruth changed the subject. “I notice you only told him two of my names.”

“And one of mine,” Gillian said bitterly. “So? Can you imagine how he’d react if I told him sometimes I was Gerard? It’s been hard enough to mask it at school.”

“It’s okay, sweetie. Someday, you’ll meet someone who can accept you for all the yous you are.”

“Going to be mighty lonely in the meantime.” Gillian crossed her arms.

“You want me to change him? I could.”

Gillian shook her head. “No. Just, can I be alone for a while? I’ll come in for dinner, I promise.”

“All right.” Aunt Rosa dropped a kiss on her head. “Just remember — sometimes one thing, sometimes another –”

“And never really either.”

“No. Always you.”

Gillian stood without moving, watching her aunt who was also sometimes her uncle head down out of the tree and into the house. She wouldn’t want Rosa/Ruth/Ryan to be any other way. She supposed it was time to accept herself, too.

– THE END –

380 words

My blog is participating in the Forward Motion Flash Friday Blog Group, a weekly flash fiction exercise (not that I’m managing weekly!). Check out the other participating blogs for more flash.

This odd little flash was inspired by discovering a typo in one of my published works. Oops!

Originally published at Erin M. Hartshorn. You can comment here or there.