Excerpt:

Excerpt #3

“I’ll meet you guys in the car,” Liam told them.
He headed for the cellar door, and I followed him, Manny close on my heels with an amused expression on his face.
“Can’t I come?” I asked.
“No,” he snapped. He opened the cellar door and went through.
I follwed him down the steps; the cellar smelled musty from benig closed up. Bottles of home brewed mead stood on shelves along the walls, with brewing equipment underneath, the glass reflecting the amber light of hte bare bulb in the ceiling.
Liam had always seemed so mild, so quiet, I’d never expected him to be the kind of person to have weapons. So I was shocked when he opened a closet door to reveal an assortment of knives, bows, quivers of arrows, even a sword. But it was obvious from the casual way he handled them that he knew exactly what he was doing. I wondered what else he was capable of that I didn’t know yet. These knives looked wicked, and ancient, and were unlike any I’d seen before. I watched as he strapped blades to all sorts of places I would never have thought of, then pulled out a long black coat and put it on over everything. Suddenly he really didn’t look like a professor anymore; he looked like some comic book combo of hero and angel of death, and I was terrified of him.
And of course, being an idiot, also more attracted to him than I’d ever been. It took him veyr little time to do all this.
Manny had trailed down the stairs behind us.
“I want to come,” I said again.
“I don’t have time to talk to you about this,” he said, closing the closet door and heading back up the stairs.
“Liam, you’ve seen what I can do in a tight spot,” I said.
“I also saw you trip, hurt your ankle and nearly bash your head open,” he retorted.
We got to the top of the stairs, and he closed the cellar door behind him, turning the key in the lock, then pocketing it.
“If I could get close to one of them, I could touch them,” I said. “Maybe I could see what they are up to.”
He stopped with his back to me, his hand on the back door, his hair gleaming red-gold in the kitchen light.
“Victoria,” he said, his voice ragged, “I’ve already held the dead body of one woman I loved in my arms. Please, please don’t ask me to do that again.”
And he walked out in to the rain, slamming the door behind him.
I stared at the square of glass in the door, still vibrating from the force with which Liam had slammed it. When it stopped moving, I turned to see Manny looking at me with a grin on his face.
“What’s wrong Vic?” he asked. “You look liek you just swallowed a bug.”
I stared some more, completely uncertain of what tos ay.
“Come on, you can’t really be surprised that he’s in love with you, can you?”
“I can, actually.”
He chuckled. “Well, that makes one of us.”

Excerpt #2

“You don’t look too happy Vic” Manny said.
“You’re observant.”
“What’s wrong?”
“you mean other than the fact that I feel like I’ve been run over by a mack truck, and I just discovered that my father is a sorceror-turned-tree-spirit?”
“Well, waht’s so bad about your father being Merlin? I think it’d be kinda cool.”
I sighed. “I’ve always felt like I was sort of off. Now I realize I’m actually a complete freak. Of circus sideshow caliber.”
“Vic, you have some pretty warped ideas about what makes someone a freak. You’re different, I’ll give you that. But you also have some pretty amazing abilities that most kids your age would kill for. You want to talk about freaks? You should meet my friend Clarence.”
“Why?”
“Clarence is 6 foot 4” inches tall and only has one leg. He refuses to get a prosthetic, and he won’t use crutches. He hops eveyrwhere. He insists on wearing designer suits, the more expensive the better. And if anyone asks him how he lost his leg, he says ‘I don’t know what you mean. Surely you are having a dream.” Or something like that. Cuz Clarence talks in rhyme.”
“You’re full of shit.”
“I’ll introduce you some time. You’ll have to be sure to complment him on his hat.”
“His . . . hat?”
“Yeah. Dude wears a giant knitted turkey on his head. All the time. Not just on thanksgiving.”
“Um . . .”
He grinned at me. “You think I’m making this up, I can tell.”
“Why would I ever think something like that?”
“You’re a skeptic, Vic. You should give it up. It’s not healthy. Especially when you’re the daughter of a legend.’
I sighed. “Well, I will admit, my skepticism is starting to be harder and harder to maintain.”
He winked. “good. It’ll all be way easier when you stop fighting it so hard.”
“So . . . Clarence . . . did he knit his own Turkey hat?”
“Of course. Learned to knit during a hospital stay after he lost his leg--a shark bit it off, can you believe that Shit? Spit it out, I’ll bet, Clarence probably didn’t taste too good. Pickled all the time.”
I stared at him.
“Can you imagine the look on the face of the poor bastard who found Clarence’s leg washed up on the beach? Just a leg, and a foot, still encased in a size 10 red Nike.”
I stared some more.
He laughed at me. “C’mon Vic. Things are heavy right now, I know. Which is why you need to LAUGH. Or get drunk. Does your mom have any whiskey?”

++++++++++

Excerpt #1

Note; my novel involves faeries. One of the standards of folklore is that angry or vengeful faeries will spoil the milk. I decided to incorporate that in to my magical realism novel. This scene is the one in which all the weird stuff starts to happen.

I put the kettle on, yawning, and threw a tea bag in my favorite mug. While I waited for the water to boil, I opened the fridge to get out some cream . . .
And almost gagged as I was assaulted by the nauseating odor of rotten leftovers and spoiled dairy.
“UGH!”
I slammed the door shut again, setting the jars and bottles inside rattling against each other.
I stood there for a minute trying to decided if I would ever be brave enough to open that door back up and face the horror within.
It would have to be done sooner or later . . . but later sounded good to me.
I heard Anna moving in her room, and she emerged a few seconds later in a deep crimson t-shirt and a pair of orange flannel pyjama pants. She saw me standing in the middle of the kitchen with a stricken look on my face, and stopped in the hallway.
“Are you okay?” she asked, her voice still scratchy and thick from sleep.
“yeah, I’m all right. But I can’t say the same for the leftovers.”
“What?”
“I think the fridge is dead.”
She came up next to me. “It’s still running. Listen.”
I listened; the fridge was whirring contentedly.
Anna reached for the handle.
“Don’t--” I started to say, but it was too late, she’d already pulled the door open, and the putrid smell washed over us again.
“UGH!” she said, and slammed the door shut again.
We stared at each other in dismay for a few seconds, then burst out laughing.
“What the hell are we going to do?” I said when we finally stopped.
Anna wiped tears from her eyes. “I have some clothes pins, we could put them on our noses,” she suggested.
I hurried to the sliding patio door and opened in, gratefully inhaling the chilly damp air that smelled of rain and moss.
I turned to her; she was waving her hand in front of her nose. The kettle screamed; she turned off the stove and moved the kettle aside to silence it.
“I guess we’d better empty it out before we go to breakfast,” I said reluctantly.
Anna sighed and reached for the garbage can.
It didn’t take long; we had to throw everything away except for a jar of dill pickles and a bottle of soy sauce. Then we scrubbed out the inside with soap and baking soda. But it was weird; the air inside the fridge was still really cold. How had everything spoiled so spectacularly overnight in a cold refrigerator? There was even mold growing on the sides and back, which we had to attack with bleach. It made no sense.