TEA WITH FAITH – Newsletter (Pic – Grumpy, no makeup, checkin’ on a tree after the freeze

Pic –

No Makeup, Grumpy, Freeze
I have news and news. SO MUCH NEWS. Not all the news can be shared right now – but some news can, and I am psyched! Also there is a snippet at the bottom taken from the new shiny…

Dudes, y’all don’t stop reading till the bottom. You will be glad you did!

So. News. First, my next newsletter will have a totally different format and header. The FB pages
will be different. And my website, www.faithhunter.net , will be different and is getting a re-vamp. (koff koff) Why the website? Because platforms are getting horrible and I want to control what I use and what you see, and I want to set it up so y’all can talk to each other in multiple places.

Next! I have 5 projects in the works. I have NOT been able to tell ya’ll because contracts had not
been signed. SEKRETS! I HATE KEEPING SEKRETS! But as of this week I have 5 – can you    believe it? – 5! projects in the works. Oh crap. I have 6 projects. AGH! I can’t keep up with them.

The first is a short about Shiloh Everhart Stone. It is going in an antho with BIG NAMES. And me. Yes, lil’ ol’ me. I’m in it. (Giddy!) Announcements as to title and other writers will come later.

In my story, there is a cameo of Jane…
The next is the Junkyard Cats series, book 5. JUNKYARD RIDERS. As of today, it is sold, contract in, and listed with PW (Publisher’s Weekly Marketplace) with the following horrible description:

“Junkyard Riders, in which the militant Dark Riders’ hunt for alien tech hits too close to home
for a woman’s Junkyard Roadhouse and her people, and they’re forced into a confrontation they may not survive.”

Oy.

The longer, juicier blurb is:
“Shining Smith has her roadhouse, her small nest of thralls, and has controlled her urge to
transition more people to serve her. But the Dark Riders embedded in the military and the Gov.
know about the Bug alien tech somewhere in the West Virginia mountains. They want it. They
want it all. And they want Shining. In Junkyard Riders, book 5 of the Junkyard Cats series,
Shining hits the government and the military head on. And while she’s trying to outthink and out
strategize the DRs, what about the dead Bug alien beneath her office?”

I have not even started it yet, I have no cover yet (though the cover contract is signed), and it is
not yet up for preorder, but – it has a contract with Audible and one in print. It’s due to Audible
in September, so I’m thinking probably a 2026 release. Unless I get it done sooner. Could happen.

Maybe.

Yeah, I know. That’s two. I’m waiting and waiting and waiting for the ability to release info on
the other projects. All I can say it my agent is Wonder Agent. Thank you Lucienne Diver of The
Knight Agency for all your hard work! More exciting news to come. WHOOT!

Meanwhile, to calm my nerves, I’m reading a book by RJ Blain, writing under the pen name
Lilith Daniels. It’s called GRAVE AFFAIRS. I love it! So much fun! No much NOT this world, you know? And, I mean, titanium dragons? Grabbed me. Need a titanium dragon.

She gave me permission to use a tiny bit:

It took a rain of lemurs to finally convince me that moving to Dragon Heights, Wyoming
had been a mistake. Last week, it had been toads, some of which could inconvenience
those who didn’t take them seriously. I hadn’t minded the toads.

A pair of gloves and a little care had bagged me ten dollars per dead head, fifteen dollars
per living croaker, and twenty for the endangered ones, living or dead. The head honchos
preferred them alive, but the dead ones would make themselves useful in a lab for study.
I’d gotten fifty for one of my toads, a rather nasty little shit determined to eat the world. At six inches long, it hadn’t accomplished all that much, but it had tried to take my hand off at the wrist.

It had taken a rather amused titanium dragon to pry the blighter off, and I’d been observed for two hours to make certain I wouldn’t fall over dead on them. My gloves, which went up to my elbows, had saved the day.

I am liking it so much I challenged her to write about Dragons and Cupcakes… LOL She’s putting short-short on her site about it here:  CHECK IT
OUT!

NOW! My snippet! Below is an outtake from a new shiny. I don’t usually have outtakes, and these characters still stay in the new book (one that is still a SEKRET!), but not as a point-of-view character. This is a magical world based on the short story from the 2020 Dirty Deeds, edited by RJ Blain, but  altered and expanded to make it worthy of a book length story. And yes—there will be murder, mayhem, magic, and … uh … miniature flying goats!

From UNTITLED BOOK

Jillianne
She waved the paper in the air trying to put out the flames, then dropped the school
assignment to the ancient floor where she stomped the fire out. Carefully, she looked
around, making sure Gramma hadn’t seen her magic. Accidental magic. Magic she was
hiding in order to stay on the farm and take care of her grandmother. Jill didn’t have
anyone else, and neither did Gramma. If she was discovered using magic she wasn’t supposed to have, the government would cart her off to magic school and keep her there until she was an old woman, like twenty, or something. And Gramma would die alone.
Not happenin’.

Jill stomped one last time on the charred mess. She grabbed a whisk broom and pan and a
wet rag used to clean the wood burning stove and tidied up her mess. She’d gotten good at it lately, but thankfully only at home. She hated burning up her homework. Starting over ticked her off, especially when it was caused by losing control of her magic for no good reason. This time it had just happened, out of nowhere. She hadn’t even been mad. This was new. New meant scary. She had to control it better in order to hide it. Gramma
would be so disappointed in her. Her lessons in using and hiding her gift would be useless if Jill couldn’t control it.

Jill looked up, catching a hint of movement through the window at the edge of the woods.
With the trees bare, she could see, sorta, Nimrod’s place, though the front of his house
was in afternoon shadows. She held her binocs to her eyes, focusing on his doorway.
Nimrod’s cabin was a one room log cabin, about twenty-by-twenty feet and looked more
rundown than theirs. He’d painted their place last year and left his own looking worn. She had a feeling he did that on purpose, though it made no sense to her.

Nimrod stepped out onto his porch, dressed in a pair of old desert combat fatigue pants,
barefoot and shirtless. His breath blew white clouds as he breathed, but he didn’t look
cold. He’d let his beard grow in again. Or forgotten to shave. Some said he wasn’t right in the head. She knew better. He lived with demons from the war. Feeding him had become her pet project because he didn’t always eat good or take good care of himself.

Like standing in the icy cold, shirtless.
He’d told her once that Uncle Sam’s military had taught him not to think about stuff like
the weather. He carried a gun in his right hand. A pistol, by the tip of the muzzle barely
visible in the dark. Nimrod had a gift starting up too. Precog, mostly likely, because he knew stuff. She could tell when he’d gotten a warning by the way he moved. Like a cat on the prowl.
Dayam.

She’d burned her homework and Nimrod had a vision. At the same time. That was a bad
sign. That meant the Earth’s local magic field had been stirred and trouble was coming.
Or that was the way she felt like it worked. She was smart enough to not do research on
the internet, and to not check out library books on the subject. Those could be tracked.
And she was not gonna get caught. All she had was her Gramma’s old tales of how to use
it. How to control it. Breathe. Meditate.

Jill set the binocs down and looked in on Gramma. She was already down, sleeping for
the night, her tiny body curled beneath the blanket, her dark skin shining in the light that
leaked through the curtains. Jill rubbed her skin down every day with Vaseline lotion.

Gramma had once had gorgeous skin and she had always hated it when she got ashy.
Now she slept about eighteen hours a day and moved too slow. Jill didn’t want to think
about what all that meant.

She added wood to the stove and put the percolator on the eye to make coffee. She had to start again on her homework. Magic sucked.

Hugs!  Faith