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Excerpt: Death & the Detective

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  July 1, Friday 7:30 am After his morning jog, Miles took a shower at his townhouse and sat on the porch with his coffee. He was looking forward to the daily bicycle ride of the women on the white bike. Sure enough, at 7:30 on the dot, she came peddling down his road. That’s when he recognized her. The woman from the hospital! Of course. That’s where he had seen her before. She was his Lady of the Bicycle. Emboldened by his discovery, he decided to call out to her this morning. When she was in hearing range, he leaned forward. “Hi there!” “Hi!” she shouted back. She had acknowledged his existence. He felt elated. This was already going much better than he had imagined. By then she was zooming past him. Still, he felt happy. The conversation had not been a total disaster. Whistling to himself, he returned inside and settled down at his desk to get to work on the Herle case. Eva White handed him another letter from Alephander Guiscard. The Magician had sent a new, identical invi
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Excerpt: The Sheriff’s Magic Summer Jail Break

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  Rowena Grayhide shrugged off her t-shirt and threw it aside. The crowd in the parking lot hooted approval. There were about forty or fifty Shifters here tonight, some from her pack, some other local arcanes, some out-of-towners. Some of them held sparklers, others set off small, noisy “poppers.” In the distance, fireworks from the town’s official display blossomed in the sky. But the Shifters were celebrating Independence Day in their own way. Rowena wore a sports bra. The summer night was warm and her body already glistened with sweat. Her feet were bare on the cold gravel of the parking lot, but she ignored the gravel, broken grass, and cigarette butts as if they weren’t there. She felt it though, she felt every pebble. On nights like this, when the full moon rose over the mountains, her blood ran hot, her wolf close to the surface, she felt every sensation tenfold. The crowd gathered in a rough circle around her and the other Shifter woman who were preparing to fight.  Next, she s
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Wednesday WiP: The Moon Bunny & the Sun Shifter

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" He had developed a loathing for every evil form of deception. The only lies he loved were those of a child’s imagination writ large: the lies of the theater, the cinema, of novels and video games. Those were lies, but they did not trick you out of any truth you owned. The lies of the Arts only enticed you to forget the desolation of reality long enough to endure another day. At its best, every great story was not a lie at all, but a great truth wrapped in a metaphor. A great story was a path to liberation from suffering because it led you to that great truth by tiny, tiny steps." - from The Moon Bunny & the Lion Shifter Read a novella in the same universe free--click here .  The Genie & the Gymnast is a retelling of the Arthurian tale The Green Knight.
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Writing: Motifs in Fiction

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  A motif is a repetitive design in art. It's fairly obvious what this means in the visual arts; a motif is a repeating squiggle or shape, often tiled or layered over and over throughout the painting or mosaic. In non-figerative art, the motif may be the dominant feature. The term "narrative motif" is a metaphor borrowed from the visual arts, but it's a little less obvious how to employ a motif in fiction than it is in art. A "motif" can also overlap with other  writing techniques, like "metaphors," "archetypes," and "themes," since a motif can be all of those at  once. Motifs reenforce archetypes and  themes through the use of interlinked metaphors. In certain genres, particularly fantasy, motifs are ready at hand because the entire genre is archetypal by its nature: magic, quests, lost princes, warrior princesses, assassins, dragons and thieves... virtually every fantasy trope is replete with a rich history of myth and legend
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Excerpt: The Lawyer & the Leprechaun

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  Suddenly the speedboat lurched. Her snake vision couldn’t detect any anomalous heat sources in the vicinity. “Now what?” Eleni asked.  She heard Owen messing around with the controls of the boat.  He groaned. “Only a few minor mishaps,” he said sarcastically. “The boat is out of gas, the radio is broken, the emergency flotation devices were replaced with concrete imitations, according to the message on them, as some kind of fraternity prank… Who in the fecking Light would do such a stupid prank?… Oh and…” An immense roar reverberated through the air, as cold water drenched both of them. A huge serpentine body exploded out of the water. Now her snakes detected the anomalous heat source! It glowed green against the indigo background, although she could tell it was cold compared to a mammal.  A monstrous primordial jaw opened and roared again. The sinuous outline of a cold, ichthyoid serpent reared even higher over their boat. “… and some idiot released a wild, hungry loch serpent into
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Book Feast: Free Fantasy Romance Books - June

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 Click here to find  Free Fantasy Romance Books only available in June!
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Fiction is a Hypothesis by the Unconscious

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Black Hole Eater by Thuberchs Art is a hypothesis proposed by the unconscious. In the scientific method, a hypothesis is rigorously defined, delimited and tested against reality. Artistic hypotheses are obviously not rigorous, but ambiguous, not delimited, but open to unlimited interpretation, and tested not against reality but against the subconscious hypotheses already held by readers. Fiction falls into an odd little category of its own, because it is not as inarticulate as music, which can speak only in emotions. Fiction can make (or proport to make) a "rational" argument, although the more self-conscious fiction is of its own moral, the more it risks degrading into crude propaganda. If you compare Tolkien's work to some other "fantasy" fiction written in the same era, the difference is clear. Tolkien deliberately eschewed propaganda, or any kind of talking down to his audience. That is why he wrote imaginary history rather than allegory.  It's hard the
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