Kat Parrish's Blog, page 18

A Different Kind of Christmas story

Dog’s Dinner
By Katherine Tomlinson

Christmas dinner at our house is always a big deal.
Maura always brings the candied yams. She makes them with pecans and orange juice and marshmallows and crushed cornflakes on top so they’re squashy and crunchy at the same time.
She’s the only one who ever actually eats them; the rest of the family prefers to load up their plates with Helen’s sour-cream garlic mashed potatoes and Sylvia’s cauliflower cheese and Nissa’s cornbread stuffing. Plus there’s always macaroni and cheese and corn pudding and green bean casserole and buttered Brussels sprouts and Aunt Rose’s cherry Jell-O salad.
Theo, the only brother, always brings carrot sticks and celery stalks stuffed with pimento cheese. Nobody eats those at all, but it is a tradition, so he brings them, and Mom always throws them away after she lets me lick the cheese out of the channels in the celery.
Theo’s my boy. When we were both little, I’d sleep on his bed and he’d hug me like a stuffed animal and tell me his secrets. When he got ready to leave for college he hugged me and explained that he was going away but that he loved me and would be back. I licked the tears from his face but didn’t really understand what “going away” meant until I realized I couldn’t smell him in the house any more. That made me frantic until Mom found an old sneaker that had Theo’s scent all over it and let me have it to chew on.
Dad always carved the turkey and he did it the old-fashioned way, with a bone-handled carving set that his father had used and his father before him. Sylvia’s husband Daniel thought that was a very inefficient way to do things and one Christmas, he’d come over to the house with an electric knife in one hand and a big cheesy grin on his face. He’d pushed Dad aside at the head of the table and turned on the knife.
Daniel has no conception of his order in the pack. Dad’s the alpha. Theo is the Beta. I’m the Omega. I don’t know what comes after Omega, but that’s Daniel. Dad should just bite Daniel in the throat and have done with it. Or mount him. To make it worse, Daniel’s a cat person.
The year Daniel had given Dad an electric knife, there had been an unfortunate accident that resulted in Mom getting a new dinner table at the after-Christmas sales at Wertz Brothers. After that, Sylvia’s husband kept his stupid electric knife to himself and only opened his mouth to shovel in more turkey and pumpkin pie.
Every year one or another of the sisters made noises about having the Christmas feast at their house the following year so that Mom didn’t have to go to so much trouble.
Every time someone said that, their husbands looked horrified and then tried to cover up their dismay by claiming indigestion. Truth to tell, Mom wasn’t about to relinquish her role as queen of the holiday and woe betide any of her daughters if they’d tried to insist on taking over.
But this Christmas I could sense something was different. It wasn’t just that I could smell the vodka on Donald before he even took off his overcoat. It wasn’t that Nissan dropped the glass casserole dish with the cornbread stuffing on it and started to cry. (It’s not like she made it from scratch. Everybody knew she bought the box of dried cornbread cubes and just threw in some canned chicken stock, a stick of butter, and about half a little can of ground sage.) And it’s not like one less starch on the table was going to upset anyone. Not when there were biscuits and yeast rolls and Aunt Pearl’s cornbread.
But this holiday was different because Theo had brought his boyfriend home. Everybody knew that Theo only liked girls as friends and when anyone asked if Theo was “seeing anybody,” Dad always got real quiet and never mentioned the roommate who shared his two-bedroom condo in Atlanta. Nissa and Maura had met Max and they liked him a lot. Maura had told Mom that he didn’t look gay at all, and that made me sad. Being around Theo always made me happy so I wondered why Barton didn’t look happy.
 Theo had always been good to me. He understood the difference between going on a walk and just jerking me around on a leash long enough for me to do my business. His sisters were always in a rush, didn’t realize the importance of taking time to stop and smell the roses, and the trees, and the hydrants.
I liked Max.
He smelled good. And he knew how to greet a dog, holding out his hand respectfully for a good sniff. Daniel made some snarky remarks about me sniffing at his crotch and butt, which embarrassed Max for some reason. Maura changed the subject with a glance at Sylvia, who just sat there looking mortified.
Poor Theo. He’d always had a hard time standing up to his bully of a brother-in-law. I’d heard tense, unhappy conversations in the bedroom when Sylvia talked to her younger brother, but the sorts of things she was saying really didn’t make sense to me. I could smell her sadness, though, and always gave her hand an extra lick so she’d know I was thinking about her.
During the meal, Donald drank a lot. And he just kept picking at Theo and Max until finally Theo had enough and he threw down his napkin and told his mother that he thought he and Max should go. They had plans with friends later. Mom was upset, but Dad was kind of relieved, I think. He loved Theo but he hated confrontation of any kind.
Max told me it was good to meet me and ruffled my fur. Theo told me I was a good dog and he’d see me soon. Then they were out of the door and the whole room seemed to get very quiet.
Donald, of course, had something mean to say and seemed surprised that nobody seemed to be listening. So he went back to stuffing his face. He was reaching for the sweet potato casserole when it happened. He suddenly seemed to lurch and lose his balance and he plunged right onto the table and right onto the prongs of the carving fork, which was lying tines up in the serving dish. The tines punctured his skin and slid into his flesh, just missing his thorax and ribs.
It had happened so naturally no one thought to look for an external cause for his clumsiness. And the only one who saw me was Mom. And she wasn’t going to tell anybody how I sneaked up behind Donald and bit him on the ankle just as he was leaning over. (If he’d been a more polite person and had asked someone to pass the sweet potatoes, it wouldn’t have worked.)
Sylvia shrieked of course, but then, Daniel was her husband and I guess she had to make a fuss. Maura, the oldest and most sensible of the sisters, whipped out her phone and called 911. They took forever to get to the house, and by the time they arrived, Donald was dead, his blood spreading out on the table like crimson gravy.
The newspaper obituary called his death “an unfortunate accident.”
No one ever thought to ask why he’d tripped—they just assumed he was a clumsy drunk.
No one ever suspects the dog.

Dog’s DinnerBy Katherine TomlinsonChristmas dinner at our...

Dog’s Dinner
By Katherine Tomlinson

Christmas dinner at our house is always a big deal.
Maura always brings the candied yams. She makes them with pecans and orange juice and marshmallows and crushed cornflakes on top so they’re squashy and crunchy at the same time.
She’s the only one who ever actually eats them; the rest of the family prefers to load up their plates with Helen’s sour-cream garlic mashed potatoes and Sylvia’s cauliflower cheese and Nissa’s cornbread stuffing. Plus there’s always macaroni and cheese and corn pudding and green bean casserole and buttered Brussels sprouts and Aunt Rose’s cherry Jell-O salad.
Theo, the only brother, always brings carrot sticks and celery stalks stuffed with pimento cheese. Nobody eats those at all, but it is a tradition, so he brings them, and Mom always throws them away after she lets me lick the cheese out of the channels in the celery.
Theo’s my boy. When we were both little, I’d sleep on his bed and he’d hug me like a stuffed animal and tell me his secrets. When he got ready to leave for college he hugged me and explained that he was going away but that he loved me and would be back. I licked the tears from his face but didn’t really understand what “going away” meant until I realized I couldn’t smell him in the house any more. That made me frantic until Mom found an old sneaker that had Theo’s scent all over it and let me have it to chew on.
Dad always carved the turkey and he did it the old-fashioned way, with a bone-handled carving set that his father had used and his father before him. Sylvia’s husband Daniel thought that was a very inefficient way to do things and one Christmas, he’d come over to the house with an electric knife in one hand and a big cheesy grin on his face. He’d pushed Dad aside at the head of the table and turned on the knife.
Daniel has no conception of his order in the pack. Dad’s the alpha. Theo is the Beta. I’m the Omega. I don’t know what comes after Omega, but that’s Daniel. Dad should just bite Daniel in the throat and have done with it. Or mount him. To make it worse, Daniel’s a cat person.
The year Daniel had given Dad an electric knife, there had been an unfortunate accident that resulted in Mom getting a new dinner table at the after-Christmas sales at Wertz Brothers. After that, Sylvia’s husband kept his stupid electric knife to himself and only opened his mouth to shovel in more turkey and pumpkin pie.
Every year one or another of the sisters made noises about having the Christmas feast at their house the following year so that Mom didn’t have to go to so much trouble.
Every time someone said that, their husbands looked horrified and then tried to cover up their dismay by claiming indigestion. Truth to tell, Mom wasn’t about to relinquish her role as queen of the holiday and woe betide any of her daughters if they’d tried to insist on taking over.
But this Christmas I could sense something was different. It wasn’t just that I could smell the vodka on Donald before he even took off his overcoat. It wasn’t that Nissan dropped the glass casserole dish with the cornbread stuffing on it and started to cry. (It’s not like she made it from scratch. Everybody knew she bought the box of dried cornbread cubes and just threw in some canned chicken stock, a stick of butter, and about half a little can of ground sage.) And it’s not like one less starch on the table was going to upset anyone. Not when there were biscuits and yeast rolls and Aunt Pearl’s cornbread.
But this holiday was different because Theo had brought his boyfriend home. Everybody knew that Theo only liked girls as friends and when anyone asked if Theo was “seeing anybody,” Dad always got real quiet and never mentioned the roommate who shared his two-bedroom condo in Atlanta. Nissa and Maura had met Max and they liked him a lot. Maura had told Mom that he didn’t look gay at all, and that made me sad. Being around Theo always made me happy so I wondered why Barton didn’t look happy.
 Theo had always been good to me. He understood the difference between going on a walk and just jerking me around on a leash long enough for me to do my business. His sisters were always in a rush, didn’t realize the importance of taking time to stop and smell the roses, and the trees, and the hydrants.
I liked Max.
He smelled good. And he knew how to greet a dog, holding out his hand respectfully for a good sniff. Daniel made some snarky remarks about me sniffing at his crotch and butt, which embarrassed Max for some reason. Maura changed the subject with a glance at Sylvia, who just sat there looking mortified.
Poor Theo. He’d always had a hard time standing up to his bully of a brother-in-law. I’d heard tense, unhappy conversations in the bedroom when Sylvia talked to her younger brother, but the sorts of things she was saying really didn’t make sense to me. I could smell her sadness, though, and always gave her hand an extra lick so she’d know I was thinking about her.
During the meal, Donald drank a lot. And he just kept picking at Theo and Max until finally Theo had enough and he threw down his napkin and told his mother that he thought he and Max should go. They had plans with friends later. Mom was upset, but Dad was kind of relieved, I think. He loved Theo but he hated confrontation of any kind.
Max told me it was good to meet me and ruffled my fur. Theo told me I was a good dog and he’d see me soon. Then they were out of the door and the whole room seemed to get very quiet.
Donald, of course, had something mean to say and seemed surprised that nobody seemed to be listening. So he went back to stuffing his face. He was reaching for the sweet potato casserole when it happened. He suddenly seemed to lurch and lose his balance and he plunged right onto the table and right onto the prongs of the carving fork, which was lying tines up in the serving dish. The tines punctured his skin and slid into his flesh, just missing his thorax and ribs.
It had happened so naturally no one thought to look for an external cause for his clumsiness. And the only one who saw me was Mom. And she wasn’t going to tell anybody how I sneaked up behind Donald and bit him on the ankle just as he was leaning over. (If he’d been a more polite person and had asked someone to pass the sweet potatoes, it wouldn’t have worked.)
Sylvia shrieked of course, but then, Daniel was her husband and I guess she had to make a fuss. Maura, the oldest and most sensible of the sisters, whipped out her phone and called 911. They took forever to get to the house, and by the time they arrived, Donald was dead, his blood spreading out on the table like crimson gravy.
The newspaper obituary called his death “an unfortunate accident.”
No one ever thought to ask why he’d tripped—they just assumed he was a clumsy drunk.
No one ever suspects the dog.

Ink for the Beloved by RC Barnes--a review

"First in a series" is always a great phrase--a chance to experience a new world or discover a new writer. Ink for the Beloved is the first book in RC Barnes' "The Tattoo Teller" series. It's YA done with flair and imagination. There's a mystery at the heart of it, but the heroine, 16-year-old Bess Wynters is a girl with a little something extra. What her 'superpower is" and how it affects her life and helps her solve the mystery is both original and believable.

Barnes hooks us from the first pages of the book. Something terrible has happened and Bess is sitting in an interrogation room as she's questioned by the cops and a sympathetic ADA about people she knows. Beth is confused, conflicted, guilty and defiant and we're drawn to her and her inability to give a simple answer to the lawyer's question, "When did the trouble start?" For Bess, there has always been trouble growing up in her mercurial mother's household. Her beautiful mother with tattoos all over her body and her bright red hair. She looks like her eautiful mother, although her skin is nut-brown, the legacy of a father named Charles who never met her and doesn't even know she exists.

Bess can't really count on her mother--a legendary tattoo artist whose promiscuity ensures a never-ending parade of possible "daddies" for Bess and her baby sister Echo--but she has two friends who have her back--Rueben and Joanie, whose Jehovah's Witness beliefs are challenged by the whole tattoo thing, but whose steadfast friendship survives things that would have sent a lesser friend away.

Bess is clever and brave and those two qualities almost prove her undoing as she tries to puzzle out what's going on with her mother's shady new beau Todd. She's tender with her little sister--a wonderful character who comes across like a real little girl, and not some imaginary version of what a little kid is like.

There are wonderful moments between the sisters, who share secrets and much, much more.

There are also moments that will break your heart when the meanings behind some tattoos are told. (There's a lot of good info about tattoos and the trends and the menaing. Barnes has included little vignettes along the way, and they enhance the overarching story.)

The book is complete as a stand-alone but there are still some mysteries. What happened to the mural artist who called himself Spiderwand? Will Bess ever meet her father? These characters feel like they have a life beyond the pages here. Treat yourself to the read.

Find Barnes at her website and follow her on Amazon.

Monday Excerpt from The Waking Dream

     T he Waking Dream is a "new adult" paranormal romance that I think is a little different from the usual run of PNR.  I have always been fascinated by dreams, and this story grew out of an idea I had while reading about new sleep therapies. It's a quick read--roughly 21K words, which is a novella. Here's the first chapter.   
                                              


                                                   PROLOGUE

“For in that sleep…what dreams may come?”—William Shakespeare

If you have a sleep disorder and you google “treatment” or “cure,” chances are one of the first links that comes up is the website of the Alviva Sleep Clinic (ASC), the revolutionary medical center run by Dr. Lauren Alviva and her two oldest daughters, Dr. Kitta Alviva-Fujiwara and Mira Alviva, Ph.D. It’s kind of a boring website—a homepage illustrated with stock photos, a contact page, an “about us” page. There are no links to social media, no auto-playing multi-media elements, no newsletter registration forms popping up.

It almost looks like something the doctors put up themselves using a Squarespace template and YouTube tutorials. The copy hasn’t been SEO’d. There’s no attached blog either.
It’s almost as if they’re not trying.

  But having a small digital footprint hasn’t hurt the clinic’s business. On the contrary, like a new restaurant that doesn’t publish its address or a club that opens in a new location every night, people “in the know” always seem to know where to find it.

The clinic’s unorthodox treatments for insomnia, sleep apnea, REM Sleep Behavior Disorder, narcolepsy, and sleepwalking are controversial but effective, and there’s a sixteen-month waiting list for the thirty-bed clinic tucked away in a picturesque valley in upstate New York.

The results ASC achieves are noteworthy and consistent. Former patients have left glowing testimonials on the website and rapturous reviews on Yelp. The local papers and lifestyle magazines regularly feature one—or all—of the Alvivas in articles that are as much gushing personality profiles as they are business stories. The various doctors Alviva have been featured in national print media as well, and Lauren’s expertise makes her a sought-after guest on cable and broadcast television. Everybody wishes they could sleep better.

The doctors are all extremely photogenic, all of them tall and Nordic blonde, like a group of Valkyries who decided to come to earth for a spa day and then stayed to open a sleep clinic. So that plays a factor in getting the word out as well, although Lauren Alviva discourages what she calls “the cult of personality” surrounding herself and her daughters and makes every effort to frame the clinic’s narrative as being a team effort.

It’s a big team. The ASC employs a fleet of psychologists and board-certified sleep specialists as well as nutritionists and personal trainers who work together in a holistic fashion, using everything from massage to sleep restriction therapy to tackle deep-seated sleep issues. The clinic offers seminars on stress management—open to the public as well as the in-patients—and provides customized vitamin and supplement regimens to combat insomnia and restless leg syndrome.

Successful as those therapies are, they are not the only source of the clinic’s reputation and the impassioned devotion the doctors Alviva inspire. The most enthusiastic praise for the clinic is a result of the program Lauren calls “Deep Dreaming.”

Thanks to the technologies and techniques she’s developed, Lauren and her oldest daughters can access their patients’ subconsciousness and participate in their dreams. This tandem dreaming makes it possible to access the deeper roots of sleep problems and other psychological factors that might be in play. The procedure is less invasive than it sounds, and often when the patient wakes, he or she has no memory of what happened while they were sleeping.

When the Alviva Clinic first introduced “Deep Dreaming,” it seemed like science fiction. To say the sleep science community was less than enthusiastic was an understatement. Most were deeply suspicious—suspicious to the point of paranoia.

North America’s premiere sleep specialist, Dr. G. Taylor Wells of the University of Toronto, was particularly vociferous in his opposition to the tech-assisted therapy, calling it “downright dangerous” and “criminally irresponsible.”

The patients disagreed. And they kept coming to see one or another of the doctors.
Each of them has a different area of specialization.
Lauren’s area of expertise is sleep-walking, sleep-talking, and night terrors--parasomnias all her daughters suffered in childhood.

Kitta, whose wife Mai Fujiwara was killed while working with Doctors Without Borders, specializes in helping people deal with PTSD and other conditions brought on by trauma. The Deep Dream treatments take a lot out of her and she can’t schedule more than two or three a month without suffering from PTSD by proxy herself.

Mika’s practice is almost entirely limited to those who want to change behaviors, whether it’s an addiction to drugs or overeating. The clinic offers a “money-back” guarantee for patients who relapse and most of them use the money to go through treatment again. The Clinic rarely must refund a client more than once.

If that’s all the clinic did, it would be enough to keep it in business for decades but there’s another treatment option that’s “off the menu,” so to speak, an option you won’t find mentioned on the website or in the brochures or even in the Yelp reviews. The clients seeking this unnamed remedy usually arrive at night, often by helicopter and nearly always in disguise.

They’re not here to be treated by the famous Dr. Lauren Alviva or her equally famous daughters Kitta and Mira.

They’re here to see me.

Black Friday Book Fair

Something for everyone. CLICK HERE.

Queens of Wings & Storms: a limited edition fantasy a...

Queens of Wings & Storms: a limited edition fantasy and urban fantasy collection has just published in time for the holidays. I have a story in there, a tale of a girl who dies and comes back with the ability to travel both ways between the gates of life and death. My contribution is called The Gates Between, and the solo cover was done by the great Lou Harper of Cover Affairs.

To celebrate publication, the authors of the stories included are doing a terrific Dragon-themed giveaway.  Check it out:

In celebration of our new release, Queens of Wings and Storms, welcome to the Ultimate Dragon Loot giveaway!

Follow 11 urban fantasy & paranormal romance USA Today bestselling and award-winning authors on Amazon and BookBub for a chance to win an amazing prize pack valued at $360!

You could win a $150 Amazon gift card, a Dragon treasure box full of jewelry and coins (valued at $150), and four best-selling urban fantasy and paranormal romance hard copy books (valued at $60), two signed by Sherrilyn Kenyon! Additionally, several of the participating authors are throwing in their own swag!

Gain points for each entry you follow. The more points you get, the greater your chance at winning! Subscribe to each author's newsletter for even more points!

Whoever has the most points at the end of the giveaway wins. In the case of a tie or multiple participants having the maximum amount of points, the names will be entered into miniwebtool.com/random-picker/ for the winner.

ENTER HERE: http://www.rafflecopter.com/rafl/disp...

Happy New Release of the Queens of Wings and Storms box set!


**OPEN TO US RESIDENTS ONLY**

Prizes come with:

$150 Amazon gift card.

Dragon treasure box includes a dragon box, dragony coins, dangly earrings, 2 necklaces, 3 bracelets, 2 rings. (Note: jewelry and coins are not gold or silver weight, but are lead and nickel free)

Hard copy books include Archangel’s War trade paperback by Nalini Singh, Sapphire Flames by Ilona Andrews, and 2 signed Sherrilyn Kenyon Deadman’s Cross hardbacks.

The runner up will receive a $20 Amazon gift card!

Giveaway runs November 16th (midnight Eastern Time) - December 2nd (midnight Eastern Time)

**OPEN TO US RESIDENTS ONLY**

The Season Begins

It's Thanksgiving--and I have much to be thankful for this year. Last year at this time, my landlord had just told me he was going to move his mother into the house I'd been renting for four years, and suggested strongly that he would LOVE it, if I  could be out by the first of December. I managed to do that with a LOT of help, and now live in a place that's much more comfortable and half as much. So win/win on that. Christmas this year is going to be a lot more festive but also mellower. I love the season, and have already put up my Christmas trees. Aren't they jolly? I hope this season of winter holidays finds you safe and warm and loved.

something Urban Fantastic This Way Comes

Urban fantasy is probably my favorite genre--ever since I first stumbled across Laurell K. Hamilton. And I'm really looking forward to the release of Doctor Sleep, which I'd call more urban fantasy than horror. It's always great news when a new UF series debuts, especially when it comes from a writer like Rebecca Hamilton and her co-author Miranda Brock.

The Cursed Key is now available as a pre-order for only 99 cents. Order it now and it'll be a nice surprise when it releases in January. 
Here's the blurb:

A forgotten past, a dark mage, and an unyielding curse.

Another team beat free-spirited archaeologist Olivia Perez to the dig of a lifetime, and now she’s left with the choice to wait for scraps or brave a dangerous, dusty tomb in hopes of finding other priceless artifacts. Her reward? A mysterious key she has no idea is cursed. Soon, Olivia realizes she’s brought home more than just an ancient rarity.

Malevolent visions begin to plague her. Unnerved by what they reveal, she casts away the key…unknowingly placing it into the waiting hands of a dark mage bent on destruction. Only when a shifter agent from the Paranormal Intelligence and Tracking Organization arrives searching for the key does Olivia realize what a huge mistake she’s made.


Forced to team up with the ill-tempered shifter, her journey to reclaim the cursed key leads down a twisting path of dark histories, dangerous magic, and deadly obstacles. But Olivia’s efforts to take back the ancient relic before the dark mage can destroy the lives of humans, shifters, witches, and fae alike are thwarted by her own dark past…and a price steeper than what she’s willing to pay.

Fans of Tomb Raider and Ilona Andrews will love the blend of urban fantasy, magical adventure, and paranormal romance in THE CURSED KEY from Miranda Brock and New York Times bestselling author Rebecca Hamilton!

THREE MORE WEEKS TO PRE-ORDER!!

This boxed set is one I've been working on since February. My novella, "The Poisoined Cup" is part of the collection.  Right now it's only 99 cents to pre-order. So ACT NOW as they say.
Here's the universal link.

Review of Pretty Little Gun by R.C. Barnes

Every tattoo tells a story and sixteen-year-old Bess Wynters can read those stories—the ones on the surface and the ones that are below the skin—just by touching them. It’s a talent that would get her labeled a freak if people knew what she could do, so even her mother, legendary tattoo designer Terry Wynters, doesn’t know the whole story.
This short read is an introduction to the world of Barnes’ upcoming novel, Ink for the Beloved, and it will pique the interest of anyone who has despaired at the mountains of same/old same/old YA books and their supernatural heroines. Brown-skinned Bess is refreshingly original and wise beyond her years. She sees it all, but she doesn’t share all that she sees and that’s a burden she carries alone. Her world is something different too. For one thing, there’s only one male character in this story and he’s not a love interest. Barnes teases us with a mention of a “Ink for the Beloved” ritual Terry Wynters has invented and we want to know what that is all about. In fact, we want to know more about everyone and everything we’ve encountered in this story. Barnes’ “The Tattoo Teller” series debuts later this month with Ink for the Beloved. Put it on your TBR list.

Find Pretty Little Gun here