Happy Halloween!

happy halloween!

here's a bit of my sip! It's called Grimoire Erato and it's available at www.torquerebooks.com

***

The book smelled like pine and sage, which shouldn't surprise him, the way his uncle had spread the herbs about. Kelly had expected it to smell kinda… musty. The more natural tang of spice was a pleasant surprise.

"Well, old man," he said out loud, just to hear someone talk. "Let's see what was so all fired special about this one that you didn't share it."

The letters swam a little at first. He liked his languages dead, he would admit, but it had been a long while since he'd read Latin. Hell, this was worse. It was a combination of Latin and archaic Greek.

"Every well-educated young man should read French, Latin and Greek," Uncle Noel had told him not long after Kelly's mom and dad had died in a freak snowstorm. They'd been cross-country skiing.

His eight year-old self had scoffed. "Does that mean I get a grand tour of Europe when I'm old enough, too?"

Noel's blue eyes had danced. "If you behave."

Kelly had soon learned that Noel always kept his promises, and he'd been sent off on a backpacking tour of Europe when he turned eighteen. Noel had given him a Eurailpass and enough money to last two months if he was frugal.

It had been the time of his life.

Sighing, rubbing his eyes, Kelly focused back on the book, reading some of it out loud, just for the fun of it. "A lonely man should sacrifice a cock, if what he desires leads him to this path, and should offer the flesh to the one bound to serve, to receive his earthly reward. He should read from the book at the longest hour, and light the fire that will bring him the thing he needs above all else."

Right. Lord, what a crock of shit.

Kelly closed the book and finished off his brandy, just as the old grandfather clock struck midnight thirty. Well, there was the longest hour, huh? Cackling, Kelly climbed to his feet to refill his brandy, and the fire laid out in the fireplace caught his eye. Oh, hell, why not? He lit the kindling, watching it spring to life like it never did when he actually needed a fire.

He didn't have a cock to sacrifice, but maybe he'd jack off when he went to bed. Just to see what the old book had up its leather jacket.

Which was probably not a damned thing.

hello hello!

man, I'm pooped. I have a novel due that's still a fledgling and I'm flailing (woo, alliteration)

I've been thinking a lot about my style, and about my favorite genres, and I want to hear from readers! Do you like my historicals? contemporaries? My mysteries?

Let me know what genre you think I do best. I'll give away a copy of my Arcana, Rock Bottom, from Torquere Press to one random commentor!