Tag: sneak peek

‘Jake and the Dynamo’ 2 Preview

Jake and the Dynamo (remember that book?) is still unavailable as of this writing since the unfortunate out-of-businessing of my publisher. I have no known date for a re-release, but I am seriously considering self-publishing within the next few months and also releasing volume 2 the same way. Volume 3 is also underway, though I’ve set it aside for the moment for another writing project. In any case, here is a preview.

It had been a Sunday afternoon in early spring. The weather was at last warming up, so Marionette’s drafty attic was comfortable again after a terrible winter. Although her joints didn’t stiffen up in cold as readily as a human’s did, and though she couldn’t suffer frostbite or pneumonia, she could still feel miserable. She had spent much of the winter warming her fingers over a small cast-iron stove and painting a few strokes at a time before needing to warm her fingers again.

Now down to shirtsleeves and green boyshorts, she spent a lazy Sunday lying in her cot. The paint-flecked bedclothes were in a tangled mess, partly over her and partly under.

Kasumi Sugihara, down to a sports bra and boxers, lay beside her and smoked a cigarette. In her magical form, she was Card Collector Kasumi, but for the moment, she was merely an ordinary fifteen-year-old girl. She and Marionette had wiled away the late morning and much of the afternoon reading magazines, talking about TV dramas, discussing battle tactics, and gossiping about which boys they hated.

Marionette held, balanced on her stomach, a crystal Pontarlier glass of milky absinthe louche. She gazed at it for half a minute, raised her head, and took a sip. A faintly bitter scent of blended herbs met her olfactory sensors, and then the drink slipped smoothly down her synthetic throat.

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Sneak Peek: ‘Jake and the Dynamo,’ Volume 3

I finished the essays I was working on for a side project, so now I’m back to working on the third volume of Jake and the Dynamo, currently under the working title of  The Shadow of His Shadow. Here’s a foretaste. As always, there is no guarantee that this will be in the final product.

On an added note, I am still waiting to hear back from some publishers to whom I’ve submitted, so I have no updates on possible releases of the previously published volume or its sequel.

At last, these treatments were apparently at an end. The bespectacled goblin sniffed once, made another mark in his ledger, and threw a loose silk robe over Jake’s shoulders. Then the trolls dragged him through yet another dank hallway, finally depositing him in the Bedchamber of Darkness, where he fell to the floor in a heap.

The trolls bowed respectfully before turning, leaving, and shutting the door behind themselves.

Jake raised himself to his knees and blinked against the gloom. He saw a large, four-poster bed atop a pedestal reached by steep stairs. On the walls hung an array of bizarre devices, most of which were unfamiliar to him—but the collection of coiled whips and handcuffs had an obvious purpose, as did the bloodstained rack standing in one corner. Ropes and chains dangled under the canopy above the bed.

He swallowed loudly.

On the bed lay the coldly beautiful woman he had earlier seen in the inner sanctum of the Temple of the Moon Princess. In a filmy dress of glossy black, she had one broad hip exposed, like an imposing hill in the middle of a plain. Her full, blood-red lips were slightly parted, and her round breasts rose and fell with her breath. Her raven-dark hair splayed across an embroidered samite pillow.

Frowning against bruises and stiff muscles, Jake carefully pulled himself to his feet.

Am I … am I about to score with the Dark Queen?

The Queen said not a word. She merely reached out with one shapely yet bone-white hand tipped with sharp nails as red as her lips. She patted the comforter once, twice. At the same time, she raised an arched eyebrow.

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