Angelia Sparrow's Blog, page 26

Undeath and the Detetctive Blog Tour: Gay Toltl Kinman

Hello ducks!
We have a lovely guest joining us for tea in the Gazebo today.


Gay Toltl Kinman is here, all the way from LA.

Dr. Gay is a mystery writer,  with lots of books and short stories to her credit. She's a three time Agatha Award nominee and an EPPIE winner. She's a frequent panelist at west coast mystery conventions, a judge for RWA and MWA contests and a law professor. And this time around, this amazing lady is under the cover (literally) with me in Undeath and the Detective, which drops Monday.


Here's what she has to say about her story, “Majestic 12” in The Undead and the Detective

I write mysteries—novels, short stories, plays and children’s books. Please check my pages on Amazon.

My story, “Majestic 12,” was originally epubbed on Mysterical-e, but it was much shorter. Jess Faraday,
who edited the anthology, asked questions and made suggestions, so we worked together in expanding
the story. She is a superb editor.

It’s about a University of California at Berkley professor who has been desperately searching for tangible evidence  that a space ship and at least two beings aboard crashed-landed near Roswell, New Mexico. He’s about to dig up a roll of film that someone took of the event. The Air Force said at first the crash had happened and then later denied it all.

We visited Roswell and the UFO museum there. I had a lot of facts that we cut out of the story. But it seemed so plausible that the event really had happened. I thought what if somebody found something after all this time. The beings on board might look like ET. Talk about undead! They have never really died in people’s memory.




Thank you for joining us, Gay.

Her website is http://www.gaykinman.com/author/index.htm so check her out there and on Amazon!

My Sexy Saturday:Red Light Sexy

The Love that Never Dies is an anthology of darkly sexy stories involving the undead. This week, the sexy is all about line crossing...


My story is "Between Despair and Ecstasy."

Marcus is a highly trained Servant of the Undying. Samil has been dead, or rather Undying, since a Hittite sword ran him through as he marched in the armies of King David.

They hunt vampires.


Not At ALL Work Safe.




Marcus pulled him closer and gave Samil the best kiss he'd ever given any man. Slow and deep, he took his time, shutting out the red reality of the house and losing himself in the wet silk of Samil's mouth and warmth of his body. After the first moments, Samil seized him, filling the kiss with desperate passion, his need almost  burning Marcus' lips.

When Samil released his mouth, Marcus stood. He smiled and continued kissing him, learning the planes of his face, the curves of his neck and even the taste of his blood-streaked chest. He lingered on the responsive nipples, ferreting them out from the dark curls around them and flicking with his tongue until they crinkled.
Samil moaned softly. He clutched at Marcus' sides, finally grabbing his ass with no gentleness at all.

Marcus looked up and then nipped the left nipple. "Take it if you want it. I am here to take care of you, after all."

Samil hauled him out of the kitchen by his shirt front and slammed him against one splashed wall in the hallway to kiss him again. His big hands fumbled at Marcus' belt and pants, shoving them to the floor half-way along the hall.

The master bedroom was as gruesome as the rest of the house. Four more vampires lay here, all decapitated. Samil had stacked the heads in a pyramid on the dresser. Marcus stripped off the rest of his
clothes. Samil shoved him onto the soaked bed, bending him over at the waist.

Two barely damp fingers–Marcus hoped it was spit and not blood–pushed into his body, going deep on the first fast thrust. He gasped under the treatment, but did not miss Samil's little noise that was almost a whimper. A third stretched him. He relaxed under it, waiting.

Friday stuff

I've missed most of the week. My apologies. You can always find it on my Live journal, http://valarltd.livejournal.com

Sounds of the Season. For my sister, Jen, who was terrified of it when we were kids.







Creepy pics:

A witchy Monday

Sounds of the Season



Pics of the day

Sunday Sweets, from the Phantasmagoria's Candy butcher.

Since it's all horror all the time here in October, let me offer out a horror novel. This book singlehandedly rewrote the award guidelines for the Memphis SF/F/H award. (And I still wonder if it would have done the same had it had a man's name on it)


Click the cover for a buy link.
Blurb:
Nick Harper has a nice life, a nice job, and a nice girl. Until Labor Day Weekend, when the Phantasmagoria Traveling Wonder Show comes to town.

Seduced by the dark and wickedly erotic charms of both the Phantasmagoria and Torturo, a man known in the freak sideshow as The Pain King, Nick embarks on a journey of self-discovery, love, and pain.

But the show is not what it seems. It changes those who come with it in ways they can never imagine, not even in their worst nightmares.

And Nick's changes are just beginning...


For an e-book copy of Alive on the Inside, leave your name and email in the comments below.

A taste of the book:

The Phantasmagoria by twilight felt different than it had by day. It had been creepy by day. Now it felt downright sinister. Cyn laughed at herself. Just virgin jitters. She didn’t plan on going home a virgin. In the back of her mind, a small voice asked if she really planned to go home at all.

Maybe, it suggested, you could get a job with the carnival. They could use a tall, pretty girl either in the hoochie show or
selling candy. Cyn dismissed the thought. She had her life planned. She’d already sent her college applications. She was going to breeze through her senior year, graduate with honors, spend most of the summer with her dad and get the hell out of Peculiar. Then it was just a matter of how far and fast she wanted to go. Traveling carnivals, no matter how appealing, didn’t figure into her future.
She coasted down YY by the duplexes. She and her mom had lived on Shari Lane for a while, before Lee. The Phantasmagoria
gleamed topaz and ruby ahead. She parked her bike, locking it to the rack near the gate, ignoring her better judgment which told her to keep on riding, spend the night at her grandparents’ house and call Mom when she got there.

For a brief instant, the lights all went out. The soft breeze stirred the flaps of canvas and whistled among the metal skeletons of the stopped rides. No people moved in the dead stillness. She looked down the Midway and saw only empty booths and rides.

She shivered, remembering the way Fairyland had been so dead on her last visit right before the amusement park had closed. She shut her eyes at the sight of a skeleton propped against the side of a booth, still dressed in a ragged striped shirt and crumbling straw boater.

When she opened them, she saw the lights had come back up and she wondered how she could have missed the throng. The
skeleton was the cute duck pickup guy, who flirted shamelessly with Suzie. Atop the Ferris wheel, Debbie and Michelle screamed in their high, squeaky cheerleader voices to start it back up. People she knew roamed everywhere, shooting at targets, picking up ducks, spinning around on the rides, and lined up for attractions. At least now she had an alibi.

She hurried over and joined Suzie at the booth, putting the thought of the man’s bright blue eyes burning from empty sockets
in a bare skull out of her mind.

“Hiya,” she said. “Look, Suzie, I’m out illegal-like. I left a note saying I was staying at your place. Can
you cover for me?”

They headed to the snow cone stand. Suzie pumped her with questions and Cyn gave evasive answers.

“It’s a guy, isn’t it? One you don’t want the folks to know about.” Suzie smiled and gave her a wink. “Your secret is safe with me. Just come on over after you see him. We never lock the side door. You aren’t doing anything goofy like eloping, are you?”

Cyn laughed and squeezed Suzie around the waist. “Darling girl, why would I elope with a mere man, when you know you hold
sole and only possession of my heart?” Suzie giggled and Cyn went on. “Hark, what dark in yonder window grows? It is the east and Suze the approaching night.”

“All right, all right already. Sheesh. Someone’s gonna snitch if you keep acting like that.”

Cyn nodded and let go of her. “The last thing I need is for Mom to find out I like girls, too.” She gave Suzie a wicked grin. “I have a free pass. You want to crash the adult show? I’ll go halvsies if you come along for immoral support.”

Suzie giggled. “I have the car. Sure.”

“I have to go by the piercing booth beforehand, though. Meet me at the tent when it’s time.” Cyn hurried off to see Torturo.
The adult show was more than they had hoped. Better than late night Cinemax. Better than the liberated porn tapes they’d found in Cyn’s dad’s drawers. Suzie was still pink after her volunteer stint as they walked to the parking area. Cyn tried not to be jealous. Suzie may have gotten her boobs licked, but Cyn planned to end the night in Torturo’s bed.

“Don’t come in too late. Don’t wake anybody,” Suzie said as they walked toward the gate afterward.

“You aren’t staying for the masquerade? Costumes are provided.” Cyn pointed toward the other giant tent on the grounds, its white roof aglow with light.

Suzie shook her head. “I’ve had enough excitement for one night. See you in the morning.”

“Thanks.” Cyn gave her a smile. “You’re a pal.” She made sure Suzie got safely to her car and then hurried back.

The summer night lay over the Midway. Only a few late thrill seekers rode the rides. The booths glowed but their light felt sickly in the country darkness. The clowns were doing no business with their balloons and candy. She caught a glimpse of a furry face at an upper window of the funhouse and it went out like a candle.

“Hyperactive imagination,” she said to herself and hurried to where Torturo’s little stand sat in the shadow of the huge black Ten-in-One. She glanced at the mirror maze as she went, catching her reflection in every mirror but two. She sidestepped a clown carrying a bundle of balloons, a box of cheap toys slung around his neck, and glanced back to see how those two mirrors were angled. The clown did not cast a reflection. She rubbed her eyes and looked again. All the mirrors showed her and the clown and the Midway.


Sounds of the Season:


Creepy Pics:


Let Mr Dark take you on a trip through Chernobyl and other abandoned amusement parks, including Heritage USA and Holy Land USA.

Halloween stuff for Saturday

I am a sick little sookie today, so not much posting.

Sound of the Season

The blond girl pulled up on stage at 3:48, in the black dress and striped socks, is Bun



Pics of the day

My Sexy Saturday: Feel Like Making Sexy

From "Hunger for the Edge,"  collected in Into Dark Waters by Angelia Sparrow and Naomi Brooks. Available in ebook or trade paperback from Inkstained Succubus.



Zach is a party boy who has brought home a beautiful half-black man, whose blue eyes no longer see, from his favorite club. But his one-night stand turns into a second, and his trick is far more than Zach expected.



"Young and beautiful and bored." Adrien stroked his head. He lay silent for a while, thinking. Without warning, he flipped Zach onto his back and snarled, letting his fangs descend. "Hear me before you make this choice."

"I'm listening." Zach was already breathing hard.

"You think only of your vanity, your youth. Do you have an income source that will last for the next five hundred years? Do you have a plan what to do with the lengthy death I am about to give you?"

Zach shook his head. He'd given no thought to the mundanities of life, or undeath.

"Then I have a proposition for you. I will stay with you while you create them. If you wish, I will even drink from you: the 'rush,' the 'high' you desire. I will teach you what you must know of your extended death."

"Do it," Zach breathed. He was hard again. All his life, body fluids had meant death. Here, they meant eternal life.

 Adrien licked along his neck  "Where does your shirt end?" When Zach marked the edge with a finger, he buried his fangs just below it. Zach cried out, louder than he ever had from mere fucking. His hips bucked and when Adrien drew the fangs out to lick and suck at the blood, barely a quarter-cup, he moaned clear through it.

Friday Halloween stuff

Sounds of the season
Best listened to, without watching the vid



For National Coming Out Day. Here in Memphis, Gay Pride is tomorrow.


Pics:

Thursday Tricks, with a blessing on ol' Marie where-ever she is.

So I caught up on Sons of Anarchy and decided to check out American Horror Story: Coven. Kinda loving that one. Then again, I've BEEN to New Orleans and its energy does not mesh with mine. I was throwing up sick the whole trip. And I have see the Lalaurie house on the ghost tour. Even from across the street, it gave me a headache. Marie Leveau's was the ONLY place I felt at all healthy during that trip.

Loving the chemistry on Sleepy Hollow. But Ichabod forgot to tell Abbie that the two witnesses will be executed and their bodies left in the streets of Jerusalem...


Sounds of the Season:



Pics












 

Kitchen Witch Wednesday

Kitchen Witchery

It just isn't Halloween without rows of frosted pumpkins, flotillas of chocolate bats and endless white iced ghosts. Every holiday is a grand excuse for cookie cutters, and these are my favorite recipes for that:


Both of these recipes are from Wilton, back in the 70s/80s.

Vanilla Sugar Cookies
1/2 c. butter
1/2 c. sugar
2 eggs
1 tsp. vanilla
2 3/4 c. flour
2 tsp baking powder

In large bowl, cream butter and sugar with electric mixer. Beat in eggs and vanilla. Add baking powder and flour
one cup at a time, mixing after each addition. Dough will be very stiff and it may be necessary to blend the last of
the flour by hand. Do not chill dough! Divide dough into two balls. On floured surface, roll each ball into a 12"
circle. Dough should be about 1/8" thick. Dip cookie cutters in flour before each use. Pick up dough around
cookies. Bake on ungreased cookie sheets at 400° for 6-7 minutes.

Buttercream
1/2 c. solid vegetable shortening
1/2 c. softened butter or margarine
1 tsp. vanilla
4 c. confectioner's sugar
2 Tbsp. milk

In large mixing bowl, cream butter and shortening, with electric mixer. Add vanilla. Gradually add sugar, 1 c. at a
time beating well on medium. Scrape sides and bottom frequently. When all sugar is in, icing will be dry. Add milk
and beat on high until fluffy. Keep icing covered with damp cloth until ready to use. Can be refrigerated 3 weeks in
airtight container. 3 cups.


Songs of the Season

This always reminds of Parl Dro in Tanith Lee's great ghost-hunter novella, "Kill the Dead." Also vaguely reminiscent of Harry Dresden.
"there was dust on the man in the long black coat..."
I know it's a Bob Dylan song, but I like Joan Osborne's voice better.




Creepy pics







Because Peter Lorre is always creepy