Faith Hunter

NYT and USA Today Bestselling Author

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Faith Hunter

Early May Newsletter

Events

Hi all!

So, there’s news and more news. All of it good-ish news, since it isn’t world news or politics. Yuck. Trust me, you’ll never hear me nattering on about any of that.

I’m doing two signings. Yes, you read right. I had no intention of doing signings ever again as you well know, but Penguin Random House PR team requested I do at least one.

The first one is in July in Charlotte NC. It will be at Park Road Books on Thursday, July 16 at 7 P.M.  There will be giveaways, maybe some treats if I can get by the bakery cookies, and I’ll do a reading. They used to have a very comfortable event area with seating. Fingers crossed it’s what y’all want and y’all show up. I’m really quite nervous. (704) 525-9239 and website is: https://parkroadbooks.com/  Park Road Shopping Center, 4139 Park Road, Charlotte NC. More info to come on May 22.

The second event is “An Evening with Faith” at Liberty Book Company in Rock Hill SC. I don’t have a firm date yet, so watch for it. The event will be after hours, with LOTS of giveaways! I will provide food (maybe pizza?) but can’t figure out how to feed all the different gluten-free eaters, food allergies, etc, so it will be basic: veggie pizza and meat pizza, and if you have a food issue, please don’t be made at me for not accommodating you! I will be happy for you bring your own and eat with us! I’ll provide colas and water. And I’ll read from things you haven’t heard – like the new book, Unpredictable Magic, and the new Junkyard Cats novella.

Penguin Random House has a giveaway for Unpredictable Magic starting Monday May 11. See the banner! Go! Enter!

[[INSERT BANNER]]

Moor book news: I am almost done with the new Junkyard Cats series novella. I give it one week and I’ll be done with the rough draft. I will give it a hard edit and then it’s off to a new editor. It’s long for a novella, y’all. It’s edging up to 50K words which is a LOT!

In personal news: I have a lovely garden area. I am so happy about the Japanese Maples and the potted thymes, my few sage plants, and three different flavored basils. I can’t eat from my garden soil for a few more years—since the pesticide poisoning—so all the edible stuff is potted. I try to put in 2 hours a day in the beds, but this week I have been lax. Well, I’ve been writing a bit more, trying to finish a novella, and it rained one day so much that the ground was a MUSHY red clay MESS! All that means I am behind, so I’ll hit the beds Saturday morning.

This spring, I did lose two JMs and I have fears for three more. I’m thinking hard about replacing the dead ones with bigger trees at end of summer. Maybe even ten-year old trees. I’m tired and sad seeing the young ones struggle!  

It’s been a cold spring and paddling has been almost nonexistent. I finally went on Tuesday last, and made 6 laps, got to playing and swam 6 times. I’m not as strong yet as I need to be to try and get tricky. Haha! It was cold, even with 2 layers and a wetsuit. But it refreshed my soul. Mud wants me to do vids of me at the white-water center. Soooo… Maybe Sunday afternoon I’ll try to take some. I’ll be in 3 layers with a wetsuit on top, so I’ll look like I put on 50 pounds.

Over all, I’m happy with the books, the series (serieses?), and my life.
Love you all,

Faith

Mid-April Newsletter

News, Newsletter, RJ BLain

Hey, Y’all!

I had all those releases (one compilation, one anthology, one novella) in March/April and they are finally out now! Tales in the Midst, Paranormal Payback, and Junkyard Riders. If you haven’t read, they are all out in eBook, all are (or soon will be) out in paperback, and all but Tales in the Midst are out in audio. The audio company turned down Tales in the Midst, and I refuse to use AI, so it will not be in audio. I am truly sorry about that, but it is what it is.

Have you seen the revamped (giggle) website? It is gorgeous! The AMAZING RJ Blain did it for me as a gift, though I did bribe her with Le Creuset treats. She has a lovely collection courtesy of www.faithhunter.net Check the website out!

My garden beds are FULL of WEEDS. They look horrible. I worked for close to two hours today, and managed to dig weeds out of half of the new bed, put cardboard over the ground, and a heavy layer of mulch on top. It looks great. I am exhausted. I am getting too old for the nonsense of weeds!

I am starting tai chi, and have taken my first online lesson. I am using YouTube, instead of in person classes, because I don’t like leaving the house. I feel the motions and moves already! I’ll keep you up on how it goes.

I have been cooking new dishes with about 50% successes and failures. A total failure today was the roasted red cabbage chunks. The recipe called for olive oil, balsamic vinegar, and salt, which I have used many times on other veggies to great success. The result was bitter, which does make me wonder if the cabbage itself was the problem. I have never had bitter cabbage! I think I’ll have to toss the entire thing. (Shudders at the taste.) I made up for that failure with an old standard: sliced and roasted carrots with half olive oil and half maple syrup as a marinade. 

I’m drinking new tea – an Apple Chai which I recommend for autumn, and a luscious black tea Thai Chai, both from Adagio Tea. Soooo good! I also made my own herbal chai with a tiny chunk of dried turmeric root, 6 dried ginger root slices, one dried anise “flower,” one cinnamon stick, five whole black peppers, and two dried clove buds. It is wonderfully soothing, good for the digestion, and also is quite tasty, if I say so myself!

While sipping teas, I am reading. I have recommendations.

Jennifer Estep’s Only Bad Options and Only Good Enemies. Excellent! Available now. Book three coming soon.

The first three books of the Dungeon Crawler series, by Matt Dinniman. They are well crafted, but I lost interest on book three, and put it down. Come to think of it, I put it down to read the following book, and it was so fabulous, I could not come back poor Carl, so that might have been the problem.

Ilona Andrew’s, This Kingdom Will Not Kill Me. I am in awe. It will take 2 reads to take it all in, but wonderful. Available now.

And I am just starting the third and final book in RJ Blain’s Lowrance Vampire trilogy DEATH DANCE! This series is fun, snarky, fast moving, and offers a different concept of vampires: their history, gifts, relation to shapeshifters, and how to view them in history and present. And did I say Fun? Fun! This novel opens with the beheading of bad-guy-vamp, which is a favorite opening for me. The cover is adorable too, see below. It’s out in Tuesday 4-21 everywhere. https://www.amazon.com/Death-Dance-Lowrance-Vampires-Book-ebook/dp/B0F2ZWKXH8/

I hope all are doing well. Life in 2026 is just as weird (though in a different way) as the rest of the 2020s. Breathe. Read! We will get through this too.

Junkyard Riders snippet

Shining Smith series

“Yes. Shining Smith, I thank you for your attention and your time.” Today Gomez sounded like a snooty prewar New Yorker. He was still trying on accents. I was waiting on him to try Texan. That would be perfect with Jolene’s Southern belle drawl.

“Okay,” I said. I opened a bottle of water and drank, waiting.

“This refers to the being previously known as Garrouling PopPop,” he said, as the air filters shot the scent of peppermint into the room. Bug aliens used scent as part of speech, and the speech part wasn’t anything a human mouth could make. Garrouling PopPop, no peppermint scent, was the best I could do.

“Okay,” I said again and put the glass bottle in the rack for cleaning and refilling.

“Garrouling PopPop is no longer in a state of maximum inactivity.”

“Uhhh. Okaaay. What does that mean?” I asked.

“Garrouling PopPop,” Gomez said, with a fresh spray of peppermint.

The scent was so strong, I started sneezing.

Between my sneezes Gomez finished, “—is no more.”

“He’s dead?” I asked. I grabbed a handkerchief and shoved it against my face.

“He is not a he and never was. Garrouling PopPop is not dead. I have told you repeatedly that Garrouling PopPop has been in a state of maximum inactivity. Now, Garrouling PopPop is no more.”

“Which sounds like dead. Please stop saying his name. I’m dying here.”

“No. Your poor ability to scent emotions, your limited neural capacity, lack of neural computing capability, and deficient problem solving skills are insufficient to understand my captain’s biology.”

“I think you just called me stupid,” I said. “If he’s not dead, what is he?”

“The closest analogy in your nonspecific language is, ‘active, timorous, saturated, multilarval sponge state’.”

I pressed the spot on the command center that flushed the smells out of HQ. “So, he’s not dead.” I blew my nose vigorously.

Gomez sighed. The AI actually sighed. He had been around Jolene way too long. Tuffs, who had clearly been listening, jumped and slipped through the flap opening in the office, taking the slide to the lower levels of the Bug ship. “They have no equivalent pronoun in your language. However—they are not dead.”

From Junkyard Riders, novella 5 in the series.