Jean Marie's Domain

Originally published at Jean Marie Ward. You can comment here or there.

I’m still working my HfH rewrite. This time my Sunday Six is a little bit of description. Enjoy!

A storm system dumped a couple inches of white stuff on the ground a couple days after Martin Luther King’s birthday. But snow doesn’t usually stick on the mesa, even when it’s cold. Three days after the storm, there wasn’t enough left to worry about. Nothing the leather-topped trainers I’d worn to the construction site couldn’t handle, at any rate. Brisk snaps of wind carried the scent of pine and creosote. Between breezes, the late afternoon sun warmed my back under my borrowed jacket.

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Originally published at Jean Marie Ward. You can comment here or there.

Hellfire Lounge 3: Jinn Rummy

Balticon is less than four weeks away, and I’ll be participating in two (count ‘em, two!) launch parties for two amazing anthologies, The Modern Fae’s Guide to Surviving Humanity and Hellfire Lounge 3: Jinn Rummy. In honor of the occasions, this month’s Six Sentence Sundays will be devoted to the stories featured in those anthologies. Since you’ve already had several snippets from “Fixed”, let’s take a taste of “Burning Down the House”, my story in Hellfire Lounge 3. Enjoy!

Eddie Woodhouse lurched between the tables of the Sixth Circle Club, apologizing every ponderous step of the way. Carrying a full-grown jinni inside his skin was hell. Its spine-crushing weight was only the start. Despite the swelter of July in New York, his thermal fleece sweatsuit, the heat of the crowd and the flames jetting in the six upright iron cages evenly spaced along the club’s circular wall, it was all he could do to keep from shivering as he approached the sorceress waiting at the shadowed table furthest from the door.

Gritting his teeth, he eased his tripled girth into the wide-armed leather chair across from her. The puffy cushions clenched around him like a boxing glove around a fist.

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To read the rest, you’ll have to buy the book–and you can get it at Balticon. Hope to see you there.

Originally published at Jean Marie Ward. You can comment here or there.

Here it is, your last Six Sentence Sunday entry for the month of “Fixed”, my story in The Modern Fae’s Guide to Surviving Humanity. And because I am evil, it is a cliffhanger. If you want to read more, well, you just have to buy the book.

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“Just as I thought,” she said. “Prepare this animal for surgery. I need to operate immediately.”
His head shot upward. Backed against the steel bars, he couldn’t help seeing past her glamour. The lines scoring her forehead and bracketing the corners of her wide, lipsticked mouth floated like a painted veil over a pale, ageless face as perfect as a marble Madonna.

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Originally published at Jean Marie Ward. You can comment here or there.

For the regulars here, this story is old news. But it’s only six sentences long, and for Six Sentence Sunday, I couldn’t resist:

“He came in through the window,” the princess said. As if that explained everything.
Fortunately, for her father the sultan, it did. The sultan ordered the harem eunuchs to remove the corpse of the Byzantine ambassador’s brash young son, and the wedding went forward as planned.
Nine months to the day, the caliph’s beautiful new wife delivered to her aged husband a fine, lusty son. The boy’s eyes were the same shade of pale green as the caliph’s–well, close enough.

Originally published at Jean Marie Ward. You can comment here or there.

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This week’s Six Sentence Sunday offers offers the opening of a story you can read right now, “Billy’s Monster” from Hellfire Lounge 2: Rat Pack Redux. If you like your horror with a big helping of humor and fun, this is the book for you. I haven’t posted my usual information slug on the main page only because resizing the cover is giving me grief. The delay is killing me, too. In addition to great stories by C.J. Henderson, Danielle Ackley-McPhail, KT Pinto, Robert Waters and our fearless editor (and he has to be!) Rick Allen Leider, the book features a fabulous cover by Ben Fogletto and amazing interior art by Ed Coutts, Ben Fogletto, Denny Fincke, Jason Whitley and Paul London. (Face it, I’m all about the pictures. )

“Billy’s Monster”

Billy was six years old when he brought home a monster. It had sharp, pointed teeth all around its mouth like a possum. Two rows of three stubby horns each grew from its forehead. Its spotted feathers were as soft as bunny fur, and it churred when Billy rubbed its tummy and fingered the satiny leather of its wings.
Billy’s parents didn’t know what to make of it. But it wasn’t too big, and they never did see a creature better at catching the mice and other varmints around the farm.