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Boosting the Signal

Boosting the Signal

Boosting the Signal: Street Fair, by Jeffrey Cook and Katherine Perkins

Today’s third Boosting the Signal catchup post features another pair of previous guests: the writing team of Jeffrey Cook and Katherine Perkins! They’re on hand to bring you an excerpt from Book 2 of their Fair Folk Chronicles–a series which, since this book’s release, has gone on to include a Book 3 as well! In this short excerpt from Street Fair, two characters have a very basic goal before them: figure out how to get past a barrier. Without exploding. As you do.

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Street Fair

Street Fair

After what seemed to Megan like an hour of slow, careful walking and occasionally squeezing through tree roots, they reached the first artificial support. The walls started showing fewer signs of encroaching roots, and the earth appeared more worked.

Not long after that, Ashling stopped them. “We’re getting close. It’s warded. I’m not finding a way around it.”

Megan recalled the pixie’s occasional very precise movements in the tomb before and wondered just how many traps she’d allowed them to avoid, beyond those she’d seen evidence of. “So what now?”

“Two options,” Ashling responded. “Three if we had a handy backhoe and a three-foot-thick concrete barrier.”

“That bad?” Megan couldn’t help but ask.

“Only if we cross this line,” Ashling pointed out an imaginary line on the floor, “Or mess with the ward the wrong way, or mess up with anti-magic, or maybe jump around too much, or breathe really hard in this direction.” Megan and Jude both drew back a little, careful to direct their breath elsewhere, in case.

“So, we have two options. How do we get through?” Megan asked.

“The more I think about it, the more options we have. It’s too bad we don’t have a goblin minesweeper or something.”

“That’s a thing?” Megan knew she was going to regret asking, but had to know now. “What sort of equipment do they use for that?” After seeing the goblin market, Megan was trying to imagine what sort of tech or magic might be involved.

“Running shoes,” Ashling answered cheerfully. “Hopefully really good ones.”

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Boosting the Signal

Boosting the Signal: Raven’s Heart, by Shawna Reppert

Prior Boosting the Signal guest Shawna Reppert is the featured author for today’s second Boosting the Signal catchup post. If you enjoyed Shawna’s previous posts about her Ravensblood urban fantasy series–or better yet, if you enjoyed the previous books–then you’ll be pleased to see she’s come back with an excerpt from Book 3, Raven’s Heart, available now! And if you’ve read Book 1, you’ll be able to tell very quickly that Raven’s goal here ties right back to the events of that story. Because his goal is very simple: take down a very, very bad person.

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Raven's Heart

Raven’s Heart

From the Author: In this excerpt, William has just killed a clerk at Raven’s favorite bookstore, although it’s likely that the intended victim was the bookstore owner, Raven’s friend Josiah. Raven, together with his fiancé Cassandra and two Guardians, is trying to figure out who the next targets might be, and how they will ultimately deal with William.

——

It took Raven a moment to realize that Ramirez was asking for a list of his friends. Once, it would have taken a significant and believable threat of force before he allowed such an invasion of his privacy. Once, the list would have been either incredibly short, or non-existent.

“Cassandra, of course,” he said.

“Of course,” Ramirez agreed.

His tone said don’t treat me like an idiot. Despite the grimness of the conversation, Raven managed a half-smile.

“Sherlock,” he added after a moment’s thought. “But they are less likely to go after either of them, at least until they have run out of easier targets. The same goes for Ana. She taught William’s father a healthy dose of caution in the Mage Wars, and William will not have forgotten.”

Though in other respects, Ana would be a prime target, both as Cassandra’s aunt and as the person responsible for negotiating a pardon for Raven in exchange for his betrayal of William. The thought of Eric picking off the people close to him left him with a sick feeling deep in his gut.

“Other than that, it’s hard to say. It depends on how much William knows about my associates. He’s almost certainly the one behind this, with Eric just his trained attack dog. The fact that Josiah was the first targeted suggests that he is going after personal, not professional contacts, but he might not limit himself. I usually have dinner with Madeline Love at least once when she is performing in town.”

“Madeline Love?” Donovan asked.

“Opera singer,” Raven said. “Famous in the arts and culture community. I’m not surprised you haven’t heard of her.”

“Stop baiting my partner.” Ramirez said it in the same tone one might use to request someone to stop leaving the door open as it caused a draft. “Anyone else? Chuckie?”

“Maybe. We’ve worked together a few times. And of course he was instrumental in helping me prove my innocence in the theft of the Ravensblood.”

“Of course.” Ramirez’s eyes darted away.

Raven had no interest in flogging the man for past crimes; Ramirez did a good enough job of it himself. “As to others, he might target other GII members of the Wing who worked with me last year. He thought a moment longer. “The MacLeans. I would worry about them more if they weren’t all in Australia. Neither Mick nor his boys are easy targets, not by a long shot, but I’m not sure William would know that. However, I doubt William and Eric are going to travel half-way around the world to prove their point.

“Then there are any number of agents of GII I’ve worked with. It might be easier to get the list from Sherlock than rely on my memory. Generally, I am more interested in solving the puzzle than paying attention to the people around me.”

“Why does that not surprise me?” Donovan sniped.

Raven merely smiled as though he had been complimented, deliberately baiting the man. “Then there’s the handful of agents from the pub nights Chuckie finally dragged me to.”

“Pub nights?” Ramirez raised an eyebrow, clearly amused.

“Yes, well.” Now it was his turn to look away. “There were only the two times. Three maybe. Because Chuckie insisted.”

And because he could not deny his debt to the annoyingly cheerful geek mage that Cassandra had somehow managed to end up with as a partner. And because Chuckie did grow on one, though Raven would die before he admitted it.

Ramirez barely stifled a chuckle. “I’m just trying to picture you in a pub. Doesn’t GII usually hang out at the Barley Mill?”

“Usually, yes. If I am to accompany them, however, I insist on the Blue Moon. Though both are, I understand, owned by the same brothers, the Blue Moon has a certain understated elegance that I find acceptable.”

Ramirez shook his head. “Corwyn Ravenscroft in a MacMenamin’s pub. Will wonders never cease.”

“I believe we are straying somewhat from the topic,” Raven said.

“Yes, right. I’ll get the list of agents who worked cases you consulted on from Sherlock. And I’m guessing that Chuckie has a better idea of who was at those pub nights. Just in case they do decide to go after your drinking buddies.”

Ramirez said the last phrase with particular relish. Raven suspected he would be hearing about this for a long time to come.

“The thing we need to do is find William and Eric,” Raven said. “Rather than sitting around twiddling our thumbs and wondering when they are going to strike next.”

“You have any ideas on how to do that, you just let me know,” Ramirez said.

“I doubt he’s had the time to build the strength and resources for a hidden sanctuary like he had before.” Raven said. “My guess is that he’s holed up somewhere in North Portland. If I only could have managed a clearer trace on Eric’s teleport.” He ground his teeth in frustration.

“I’ll get Chuckie doing a search for any homes in the area with ownership that might trace back to William or Eric Blanchard,” Cassandra said. “If the Archmage was clever enough to hide his ownership through holding companies and the like, I wouldn’t put it past William.”

“What I want to know,” Ramirez said, pinning Raven with his gaze, “is can you take him?”

Beside him, Donovan made a choked noise of protest.

“The man is too dangerous to hold.” Ramirez answered Donovan’s objection, but his eyes were still on Raven. “We both know it. I doubt anyone on the Joint Council is going to call for an inquiry if William winds up dead rather than in custody.”

Raven rather doubted it as well. The Pro Tem Archmage had been on the front lines during the Mage Wars and had seen up close and personal what a mage like William could do. Mother Crone, with her Craft practicality, would weigh the greater good over rhetoric and the Mundane President was justly terrified of what would happen to his community if William ever achieved the rule absolute that was his goal.

Or that had been his goal the last time around. He lacked the power base now to achieve such a goal; surely even William in his madness must see that. This time, he must be after pure revenge. Which might make him even more dangerous, since he had little left to lose.

Ramirez leaned forward, deadly serious now. “My question remains. Can you take him?”

On one hand, he had the Ravensblood. And William might still be badly weakened from their last encounter.

On the other hand, William had had several years to recover. And Raven had barely won the last time.

He gave them the only answer he could. “Gods, I hope so. For all our sakes.”

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Boosting the Signal

Boosting the Signal: Black Angel, by Kyell Gold

As I posted earlier this week, I got severely behind on doing Boosting the Signal posts. I will be putting them on a more or less official “soft” hiatus for a while (meaning, I’m not actively recruiting posts but I’ll post ’em if anybody sends me some). But before I do that, I wanted to clear my queue of the posts I did have already! This is the first of these, featuring the recently released Black Angel, by fellow Outer Alliance member Kyell Gold. If you like stories involving anthropomorphized animals, particularly with queer content, Kyell’s got a character named Meg you’ll want to meet!

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Black Angel

Black Angel

Hi, I’m Meg. I’m an otter, and I’m nineteen years old, and I’m trying to get a handle on what’s real in my life. I mean that literally as well as—well, I’ll just lay it out.

I’m an artist and I recently got some time to myself and decided to draw this comic story I came up with years ago, about a muskrat who wants to be a voodoo priestess. As I was drawing it, I felt like I went into a light trance, and then the main character of this story talked to me. Or I imagined that, anyway. And now the frustrating thing is that I can’t draw anything else, even the commissions I make a living off of.

To make things worse, I started having even weirder dreams, about some weird Christian cult where girls are forced to marry at sixteen, where I was following this otter who’s attracted to her female best friend, which is of course verboten in this cult.

Those dreams felt really real, but I know they’re not. And I’d like to talk to someone about them, but—well, here’s what’s going on with my friends.

My best friend is probably this grey fox named Athos. We met online while I was in high school, and yeah, he’s older, but not that much older. And no, he didn’t try to put moves on me or anything. We were just good friends. Except the last time he was down here, we were arguing and he grabbed my arms and I just flipped out. I knew he wanted to be more than friends, but I didn’t ever see it as an immediate thing. You know? But him touching me like that freaked me out.

And what we were arguing about—well, I’ve got these two other friends, great guys. Sol is a wolf and Alexei is a fox from Siberia. They both had some experiences the last few months, or thought they did. Sol said a ghost saved him from his abusive boyfriend and stopped him killing himself. Now, I’m all in favor of people not killing themselves, but don’t put it down to a ghost. Alexei then thought he saw a ghost, and Athos thought he saw it too, and that’s what we were arguing about.

Because there’s this thing that happened to me a while ago, put me in therapy for four years and on antidepressants. If there was just one thing I learned from that whole stupid chapter of my life, it’s that ghosts aren’t real.

So you see where my problem is. If these are just hallucinations, I could go back on some kind of pill, but that screwed with my art as well, so I don’t know that I want to do that. Rent’s due at the end of the month and I have to make money somehow. And if it is real—then that other thing from long ago is real, too, and I really don’t want that to be true.

Meanwhile there’s this pressure to decide if I want to date Athos or not (he apologized for touching me without asking, you should know). And the problem is that I can’t even tell if I’m attracted to boys or girls. So I should probably figure that out first, right?

Sheesh. It’s gonna be a weird summer. Hope I make it through.

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Boosting the Signal

Inadvertent Boosting the Signal hiatus and apology

Y’all may have noticed that there haven’t been any Boosting the Signal posts in a while. This is not because I don’t have any to post–because I DO. But I’ve been swamped with trying to plan a bunch of my own projects lately, as well as not having much brain left over from the day job.

But I’ve been also trying to conduct a bunch of digital spring cleaning in my life, and that includes working on email backlog, which in turn means working on getting those lagged Boosting the Signal posts out.

Therefore, I’d like to issue public apologies to Shawna Reppert, Jeffrey Cook, Kyell Gold, and a couple other folks I think I’ve missed, about not getting your posts up in a timely fashion. I will be putting up those lagged posts this week, so please be on the lookout for those.

Once that is done, I’m also going to put Boosting the Signal on a bit more official of a hiatus. I have a lot of writing I need to do–as I called out in my post from earlier today, I have a lot of balls in the air and I need to focus on juggling them properly if I want to get at least one release done this year. So I won’t be actively recruiting Boosting the Signal posts for a while.

If people want to actively send me ones, I’ll be happy to run ’em, I just won’t be actively recruiting them.

And again, apologies to Shawna and Jeff and Kyell and the others!

Boosting the Signal

Boosting the Signal: Here Be Magic Boxed Set, by Various Authors, Post No. 6

And now, the second post of today’s Boosting the Signal doubleheader for the Here Be Magic boxed set! This final post in this feature run showcases Angela Campbell, whose story in the boxed set is Gorgeous Nightmare. And I think it’s safe to say that Angela’s heroine’s goal is “navigate her way through chaos”, based on the excerpt Angela’s sent me to share with you all! And by chaos, I mean “figure out how to deal with her ex-husband”.

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Here Be Magic Boxed Set

Here Be Magic Boxed Set

I am a big fan of books that can’t be pigeonholed into one specific genre because, let’s face it, the best stories are a mixture of drama, comedy, romance, and suspense—right?

Personally, I also love stories that toss in a little magic in the form of paranormal or fantasy. That’s why I’m so thrilled to be a part of this anthology, which features a great selection of stories that mix genres in an exciting way.

My contribution is GORGEOUS NIGHTMARE. Dakota McBride is doing everything she can to fit into her new life in Asheville while guarding secrets that could get her killed. An unexpected run-in with Tyler Jackson—her older brother’s best friend and her long-time fantasy—puts everything in jeopardy. Dakota is a woman being hunted by a deadly serial killer, and Tyler seems hell-bent on protecting her, same as he always has. Through dreams, he’s foreseen her impending death. What neither Tyler nor the killer understand is that Dakota doesn’t need a protector. Heaven help anyone who threatens her now…

For readers of my books, I should point out this story isn’t part of my psychic detectives series, although it features a psychic hero solving a (hopefully) suspenseful mystery.

Here’s a brief except:

She was about to open her mouth and ask Tyler again what he was doing there when there was a soft knock on the door behind her.

“Dakota? You in there?” Wayne asked.

Tyler’s smile widened as he smoothly shifted his feet to the ground. “Now things are about to get real interesting.”

“Shhh. Don’t move.” Dakota held up a hand warning Tyler not to disobey her as she turned, took a deep breath, and opened her door only a crack.

Wayne cradled Ricky Bobby in the crook of his arm as he frowned down at her. “You weren’t manning the desk.”

“Sorry. I needed to come grab something real quick. A feminine item.” Her pulse throbbed in her ears as she struggled to stay calm. “Can you please give me a minute?”

His gaze lifted, peering through the open space and into the room behind her. She moved to block his view as much as possible.

“Everything OK?” Wayne asked, his voice softening with concern.

“Uh huh.”

Of course, that’s when all hell broke loose. The yappy hellhound started vibrating with a menacing growl that quickly morphed into a loud succession of ferocious barks. Wayne’s entire body stiffened as his gaze lifted above hers, and Dakota knew without a doubt Tyler was standing right behind her.

“Mr. Kohler?” Wayne’s expression matched the confusion in his voice as he struggled to keep hold of the squirming canine.

The warm press of a body against her back shocked Dakota into silence as an arm clamped around her waist, pulling her tight against Tyler’s front. “I appreciate you checking on my wife, but I can take it from here.”

Wife! Had he lost his mind? Wait a minute. Tyler was Kohler? That wasn’t Tyler’s last name.

“Wayne, he’s not serious. I’m not his wife.”

“Honey, we might have been separated, but we’re still married and you know it.”

Oh for the love of—

She elbowed Tyler’s side and was about as effective at moving him as a feather shifting a rock. His arm tightened around her middle, and the loud hum of a purr at her ear told her the cat was still firmly in his grip, too.

Things were spiraling out of control, and Dakota’s grasp on the doorknob tightened as she fought back the panic clawing at her insides. Worse yet, she had to fight the urge to lean back and let the comforting warmth of Tyler’s body seep into hers.

Wayne’s features paled before hardening. Ricky Bobby was now frantically trying to kill Tyler or the cat—or both. She supposed it didn’t matter because that’s when a door slammed open somewhere down the hall and Sandra’s voice called out, “Ricky Bobby?”

Seconds later, Sandra flounced into view, a pink eyemask pushed up and covering her forehead. “What on earth are you doing to my dog?”

The cat—she’d been calling him Harley because of how loudly he purred—began hissing and screeching, and Tyler’s arm fell away from Dakota’s middle, presumably so he could wrestle with the animal. Good. She hoped his muscular chest got shredded.

Wayne thrust the dog at Sandra. “I’m sorry, Ms. Coswell. Would you please excuse Dakota and me? I need to have a word with her.” He gave Tyler a stern look. “In private.”

Sandra’s eyes were wide as they flicked between Dakota and Wayne, and Dakota felt her face catch fire as she followed her boss down the hall. He stopped at the door that held the supplies before turning on her.

“What the hell is going on?”

“I’m sorry. I don’t—”

“Is he your husband?” He ran a hand through his graying hair. “Is this one of those abused wife situations? You were hiding from him? That’s why you were so desperate for this job and a place to stay?”

“What? No!”

“I want the truth. Do you know that man?”

Dakota clenched her teeth and lifted her chin. “I’ve never seen him before in my life.”

Wayne’s probing eyes scanned her face. “You’re a terrible liar.” He sighed. “That was the cat I told you not to feed, right?”

She glanced away, knowing she was caught.

“Look, I’m sorry, but I can’t have this kind of trouble here. I need you to leave. Do you want me to call the police so he doesn’t follow you?”

What? No, no, no. This couldn’t be happening.

“Wayne, please, no. I need this job.”

“Do you want me to call the police or not?” he repeated, biting out each word as if it left a bad taste in his mouth.

No. That was the last thing she needed. She crossed her arms and shook her head.

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Boosting the Signal

Boosting the Signal: Here Be Magic Boxed Set, by Various Authors, Post No. 5

And, finally (albeit wrapping around from last week, the last of the Boosting the Signal feature posts for the Here Be Magic Boxed Set! I’ve got one more doubleheader today for you all. The first of the two posts features yet another prior Boosting the Signal guest, and yet another bestselling Carina author: Cindy Spencer Pape. Cindy’s story in the set is Devil of Bourbon Street, and she’s offering up an excerpt to tease your fancy. Her hero, Detective Quinn Carling, has a nicely understated goal in this scene: doing a good turn for a street busker. Or at least, on the surface. Check out the scene for what he’s really after!

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Here Be Magic Boxed Set

Here Be Magic Boxed Set

“Come into the café and I’ll buy you lunch—no strings attached.” It was something Toni would have done, and it seemed a good way to honor her memory today.

Her lips, devoid of makeup, quirked. “They won’t let me in—I have a dog.”

He brushed aside a vine and peered through the fence. Sure enough a big mutt—Labrador sized, maybe, but with something long-haired and spotted in its background—thumped its tail by the street singer’s feet and grinned up at Quinn. A battered plastic bowl near its head was half full of water.

Quinn smiled back at the dog. “Doesn’t he scare away the customers?” He noticed her guitar case was on a concrete bench, a good four feet to her left—probably just out of reach of the big guy’s leash.

“Nah, Olaf’s pretty mellow.” She continued to strum her guitar as she chatted, nodding her thanks to a couple who dropped some change into the guitar case. She was sort of ordinary-looking for a street performer in NOLA—no fake vampire makeup or voodoo beads, she wore faded jeans, a yellow T-shirt and battered canvas sneakers.

“Well, tell me what you want, and I’ll bring you out your meal.” Now that he’d gotten the idea of feeding her into his head, it wouldn’t let go. He could sit on the bench out there and listen, as well as in here.

“Why?” she asked easily, as if the answer didn’t much matter. There was no accusation in her tone, just simple curiosity. Tiny smile lines around her eyes suggested she was older than she’d looked at first—maybe in her mid-to-late-twenties. “Am I your good deed for the day?”

He shrugged. “Maybe.” The truth was that he had no idea and didn’t really care to analyze his own thought process too deeply. “It’s been a day. I suppose I wouldn’t mind having someone to talk to while I finish my lunch. We’re on a public street, so I’d guess you’re pretty safe.”

“Fair enough.” Giving him that same, crooked smile, she asked for a coffee, two ham sandwiches, and an order of beignets.

Quinn doubled the order, in case she intended to share with her dog. If not, she could stash the extra away and have dinner tonight as well. He’d almost swear he heard Toni’s voice in the back of his head, urging him on. Then he took the singer’s food and his refilled coffee and wandered out to sit on the bench beside her guitar case. “Been doing this long?”

“Playing guitar, or singing on the street?” She moved the case to the ground, laid her guitar inside, and slid it under the bench. The dog moved with her, plopping his shaggy butt down on the ground in front of the center of the bench—making sure he was between Quinn and his mistress.

“Either. Both.” Quinn sipped his coffee and watched her tear off a big chunk of the first sandwich and feed it to the dog. “Name’s Quinn. And you two?”

“Darcy,” she said with a mouthful off bread and ham and cheese. “And Olaf.” After another bite, she added, “Nice to meet you, Quinn. Thanks for the food.”

It might have been a polite brush-off, but Quinn decided not to take it that way. He leaned back against the fence behind the bench. “I was enjoying your music. Seemed like a fair trade.” Quinn snitched a beignet from the second basket and bit into the hot, fried dough, dripping with powdered sugar. God these were amazing. He’d never been able to duplicate the flavor back home, no matter how hard he’d tried, despite the fact that he was a pretty decent cook.

“Works for me.” She split another chunk of the sandwich with Olaf. “I’ve been playing guitar—just not very well—since I was a kid. I’ve only been trying to make a living at it for the last few months.”

“What’d you do before that?” Quinn had no real idea why he found her so fascinating. He just did. And it wasn’t only because she was a pretty young woman, though he’d have to be blind to not notice that. He was honestly curious.

“I worked at a day care center.” One of the sparrows chose that moment to land on her shoulder, and rather than recoil, Darcy laughed, making her deep brown eyes sparkle with an amber glow. “I love these guys, but dude, you are not getting any of my beignets.” To Quinn’s surprise, Olaf seemed to completely ignore the birds.

“They are pretty persistent,” Quinn stopped himself from wiping a dot of mustard from her upper lip. When she flicked out her tongue and got it, he nearly groaned. Yeah. As soon as he got home, it was time, past time, to get his sorry ass back into the dating pool.

“But they add character—something that’s very important here in the Big Easy.” She winked at him. “Mind you, I’m a Detroit girl by birth, but I’ve been here long enough to have figured out some of the basics. Where are you from? Your accent is hard to place, but you don’t strike me as a tourist.”

“Philadelphia, now” he said. “Maryland, originally. But I lived over in Metairie for a while in my misspent youth, then here in the Quarter for oh, five years or so.”

“Just here visiting old haunts?” Her eyes widened and warmed. He could have sworn she was sensing his pain.

“You could say that, I guess.” He closed his eyes and inhaled. Haunts, indeed.

“No, really. Whatever brought you here wasn’t a happy thing.” She reached over and brushed some powdered sugar off his knee. The intimacy of the touch sent a jolt through his system. “Sometimes it helps to talk to strangers—and I’m as strange as they get.”

Quinn chuckled at that, but under her determined gaze, he caved in and sighed. “My late wife is buried here. After three years of beating myself up day in and day out, I’ve finally realized that her death wasn’t entirely my fault. So I came down here to make my peace. I took flowers to her tomb today—and after all this time, I really said goodbye.”

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Boosting the Signal

Boosting the Signal: Here Be Magic Boxed Set, by Various Authors, Post No. 4

The Boosting the Signal special feature run for the Here Be Magic boxed set continues! With this post, I welcome back yet another previous Boosting the Signal guest: Veronica Scott. Veronica’s story in the set is Healer of the Nile, and she’s sent in a character interview to highlight her heroine’s goals as well as her general personality! Check it out.

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Here Be Magic Boxed Set

Here Be Magic Boxed Set

1550 BCE

When Pharaoh sends injured warrior Tadenhut home to die, his noble family asks Mehyta, the local healer, to ease his path to the Afterlife. Mehyta discovers he’s trapped between Life and Death, caught in the dreamspace. Touched by his fighting spirit and will to live, Mehyta vows to use all the powers Shai, god of fate, gave her. Together Tadenhut and the brave healer battle to overcome his injuries, as well as threats from devious family members. While struggling to rescue her patient, Mehyta comes to realize he matters more to her than any man ever has before. But even if his life can be saved, what do the omens say about a match between a highborn soldier and a simple healer?

Today we’ll interview Mehyta, but without giving away any spoilers!

What is your idea of perfect happiness? As an Egyptian, I subscribe to the principles of ma’at, that if truth, order, law, morality and justice can be kept in balance, then the world is in harmony. For myself, I’m happy at the end of the day if I’ve done well using my healing skills to benefit others. And if I can have a peaceful dinner with the man I love each evening, talking of the events of our respective days, that’s ideal. He’s my best friend! Sometimes we go for a sail on the Nile, which is a rare treat as well.

Which living person do you most admire? Pharaoh, of course! May the gods grant him life, prosperity and health.

What is your greatest extravagance? Buying special herbs and plants from other lands, that I may try new remedies and methods of healing. I have a garden where I grow as many as possible but some foreign plants fail to thrive in Egypt, despite the bounty of the Nile and richness of our soil.

On what occasion do you lie? I misled many people when I was trying to save Tadenhut’s life, not by telling outright lies, but by not explaining everything I was doing. Allowing people to think what they wished and not correcting their misunderstandings. I always told Tadenhut the hard truths, however, about his injuries.

Which talent would you most like to have? I’d like to know how to run the estate effortlessly, to know all the proper protocols for entertaining Pharaoh and his nobles. To know how much food and wine to order for a dinner, how many entertainers there should be, how to ensure the entire house is ready at the appointed hour. Fortunately there are others I trust to arrange these things on the Hunting Cat estate, leaving me free to concentrate on using my healing gifts. I’m a very shy hostess!

What is your most treasured possession? My pouch of omen stones. They were passed down to me from my grandmother, who was a true daughter of Shai, god of Fate. I don’t have all the powers she possessed, but I can read the stones and tell people their fortunes. I have beautiful spheres of many precious and semiprecious stones and usually when someone asks a question, I put my hand into the pouch and withdraw five or six stones. The right ones will come to my hand, whether the answer is going to be favorable or ominous. Then I cast the chosen stones onto the ground and interpret the pattern. When it came to Tadenhut’s fate, however, I had to cast all the stones, more than once, and seek the counsel of Shai himself.

What do you regard as the lowest depth of misery? Being separated from Tadenhut for more than a day!

What historical figure do you most identify with? It is said in the time of the pyramid builders there lived a wise and beautiful female physician, Peseshet, whose knowledge of cures and spells was unparalleled. She was lauded in her son’s tomb as having been the “lady overseer of the female physicians.” I would so love to sit under the palms with Peseshet for an hour, asking questions. The scribes keep much knowledge from the past in the scrolls but I never learned to read. And often one can glean more by talking to someone anyway, rather than merely reading the dry accounts. Tadenhut has put forth word that he will pay dearly for any papyrus related to her teachings but as yet none have been located. Even Pharaoh’s library fails to provide anything more than her name and reputation.

What’s your personal motto? The ancient proverb, “There is no one who can ignore Shai.”

What is your most marked characteristic? I think most people, including Tadenhut, would say I’m stubborn. Once I decide on a course of action, I won’t give up, no matter how many obstacles are placed in my path. I’ll find a way.

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