Joyce Lavene's Blog: No Rest For The Wicked

Spell Booked Excerpt

Excerpt from Spell Booked

“Can you see her?” Olivia fussed with her lipstick. “There’s no use in having spelled binoculars if you can’t see anything.”

“I can see just fine,” Elsie snapped back, refusing to allow her friend to take the binoculars from her. “She’s not out there yet. If she was, I’d tell you. Why don’t you get me another cup of tea?”

Olivia gave me the look, frown between her eyes and nose wrinkled like she’d smelled something awful.

Her smooth blond hair looked perfect, as always. Her gray eyes were impatient—as always. “Do something, Molly. Do we want to check out this new girl, or what?”

I smiled at her, amused as anyone would be with the comfort of long years of friendship. “I’m sure Elsie can see her as well as you could. She’s facing in the right direction.”

“Thank you, Molly.” Elsie inclined her head, and her large pink hat slid down into her face. “Oh dear. There must be something wrong with the spell. Everything has gone pink.”

I laughed, and Olivia grabbed the binoculars from Elsie.

“Let me see those.” She put them up to her eyes and adjusted the lenses. “Oh yes. There she is now. Pretty Dorothy Lane, librarian. She dropped her bag again. That girl needs some fashion sense. Why is she carrying a purple bag with those blue tennis shoes?”

“That’s not why we’re watching her,” I reminded Olivia. “Do you see anything around her?”

“Not yet. She’s still picking up the books and her cell phone.”

She put down the binoculars that had been spelled to see through the buildings that were between our shop and the downtown branch of the New Hanover Public Library.
“Why don’t we just go talk to her?”

“Oh no. No. No. No.” Elsie clicked her tongue as she said it and then righted her hat. “You know we can’t do that. We can summon her a little, and keep feeding magic her way. When she gets the glow about her, we’ll know she’s ready.”

Olivia gave back the binoculars with an impatient sigh. “Ladies, we are never going to get to Boca this way. We’ll be hundreds of years old before Dorothy Lane even realizes we’re looking for her. Is this the best we can do?”

Elsie rolled her expressive green eyes before putting the binoculars back up to her face.

It was a discussion we’d had many times before. The three of us needed Dorothy Lane, who was an orphan and a librarian recently graduated from East Carolina.
She was also an earth witch, with no knowledge of her abilities. She was powerful for a witch with no training, but she had no idea.

Unlike Elsie, Olivia and I had grown up in the practice of magic, with our mothers and grandmothers—along with a few aunts and uncles—showing us the way.
Dorothy had no one. It made a big difference.

Normally a small coven like ours wouldn’t have been interested in an unschooled witch, but we were desperate.

There comes a time in every witch’s life when she realizes that it’s time to retire. For me, it was when I meant to zap a ding out of my new car before my husband saw it and asked what happened.

Instead, I changed the color of the blue car to bright purple. Even worse, I couldn’t change it back. How humiliating!

Like everything else, even magic fades with time. Those little things you could do once with a snap of your fingers are now big things that can’t be done at all. I have been reduced to putting dishes in the dishwasher. Manually.

It’s shocking. Shameful!
But it happens to the best of us.

“You know it’s all we can do," I reminded her. “If we approach her in any way, it could be very bad for us. She needs to come to us on her own. Those are the rules.”

Olivia got up and paced around the counter in our shop, Smuggler’s Arcane.
She filled the kettle and then whispered a few words beside it. It only took an instant before it started whistling in her hand without touching the hotplate.
“See there? Things aren’t as bad as we make them out to be.”

Our three signature cups—my goldfish, Elsie’s flamingo, and Olivia’s star—were already on the table where we sat. Olivia put some tea into each cup and poured the hot water in.

Elsie picked up her cup to have a sip. She put down the binoculars. “Whatever did you do to this tea?”

Olivia picked up the binoculars again to have another look at Dorothy. “What do you mean?”

“Why is the tea coming out of the cup?”
We all stared at Elsie’s cup. It looked as though the tea leaves had grown tendrils and were reaching out over the edge.

“Oh my heavens!” Olivia knocked the cup out of Elsie’s hand. “What is that?”

I caught the cup, Elsie’s favorite for the past fifty years, and kept it from smashing on the floor.

“It’s nothing.” Elsie chuckled. “I think Olivia got her growth spell mixed up with her warming spell.”

“You see what I mean?” Olivia’s voice was high pitched in her moment of stress.
“How can we live this way? Yesterday, I almost shaved all the fur off Harper’s body.”

Harper was Olivia’s twenty-two pound, gray and white cat. His spirit was that of a British sailor from the 1500s with fascinating tales to tell of his sea voyages.

Elsie glanced at me, her lips quivering. I did the unforgivable and laughed back.

Olivia took all three of our cups to the little sink behind the counter. We’d only recently begun using it to wash our cups and other utensils. Too many were being mangled by our cleaning spells.

“I didn’t even have a chance to take a look at my tea leaves!” Elsie complained.

“I can tell you what you would’ve seen in those tea leaves,” Olivia said. “It’s not going to get better by itself, you know. We need to find those three witches to take our places and hand off our spell book. That’s the only way our lives are going to get any better.”

Bewitching Boots Blog Tour

I want to thank everyone who was involved in our recent book blog tour for Bewitching Boots! You guys are the best! http:// www.joyceandjimlavene.com

May is Peggy Lee Garden Mystery Time!

The new Peggy Lee Garden Mystery, Lethal Lily, will be out Tuesday, May 6th.

In Lethal Lily, Peggy tries to help a Harry Fletcher find out what killed his wife in return for information on Peggy's first husband's death.

Their plan goes sideways when Harry is killed, and Peggy must solve Harry's murder, as well as his wife's.

Available as Kindle ebook, and in print.
my link text

New from authors Joyce and Jim Lavene

Taxi for the Dead Paranormal Mysteries:

Broken Hearted Ghoul– coming March 4, 2014

It’s been two years since Skye Mertz agreed to drive Abe’s Taxi for the Dead, transporting his zombie workers back to the man who gave them an additional twenty years of life. She’s raising her daughter, with the help of her ghostly mother-in-law, and keeps looking for what killed her husband the night she died.
Now she has a partner—a housewife working off her zombie husband’s service—and she’s met a sorcerer with amnesia. It shouldn’t be surprising that a broken hearted ghoul, bent on getting revenge, should show up too. After all, there’s no rest for the dead.

Win some books! Huzzah!

Win a Ren Faire tote bag with all five print copies of the Renaissance Faire Mysteries plus e-copies of Perilous Pranks and Murderous Matrimony!

http://www.escapewithdollycas.com/gre...

Murderous Matrimony!

In less than two short weeks, Jessie Morton will marry Chase Manhattan at the Renaissance Faire Village and Marketplace. But so much can go wrong in that short time. A man is murdered in Jessie's new Arts and Crafts Museum and her assistant is being scrutinized for the deed. Chase's brother and parents have arrived and are still against their marriage. Wanda's ghost is busy making Jessie's life miserable. The Ren Faire wedding of her dreams may never take place. Can she talk Chase into eloping before it's too late?

http://www.renaissancefairemysteries.com

Cover reveal for Hero's Journey

Excited to see the cover is finished for Hero's Journey. The novella will be out December 3rd from Berkley Prime Crime. It's the next installment in the Sweet Pepper Fire Brigade Mysteries by J.J. Cook. The story revolves around a group of volunteer fire fighters in Tennessee. Oh, and the ghost of the old fire chief, of course!

See it now at http://www.romanceofmystery.blogspot.com

Blog for Killer Nashville

My new blog about the dark side of mystery writing is up for Killer Nashville.



Thanks,
Joyce Lavene
www.joyceandjimlavene.com

New Blog at Author Mingle

My first blog, KEEPING UP WITH CHARACTERS, is up at Author Mingle!

This will be a new monthly blog with writing tips by author Joyce Lavene.

http://authormingle.com/writing-tips-...

About Plum Deadly

Our next mystery, Plum Deadly, a pie shop mystery, will be out in September under the name Ellie Grant with Gallery Books (Simon and Schuster). It is set off campus of Duke University in Durham, NC.

Check it out for pre-order. There will be a giveaway here for it beginning in July.

The cover isn't listed anywhere as yet but hope it will be soon!

Thanks!