I think this is one of my best BookQuotes. The music is absolutely perfect and sends me off on a giggle fit every time.
I really do work hard putting together a quote, font options, word breaking on the page, cover (when there is more than one cover), music, and special effects. Music is limited to the TikTok options, as are the special effects – but sometimes everything is perfect.
Peace Talks by Jim Butcher
Amazon Cover
Two Gun Witch by Bishop O’Connell
BOOK BLURB ON AMAZON
She’s got two guns loaded with magic.
Will they be enough?
Talen is a Stalker, a bounty hunter hired by the Marshal Service to hunt down humans stained by dark magic. She’s also a two-gun witch, one of the few elven women who can wield two magical revolvers, spell irons, at once. For three years she’s lived for the next bounty, and a whisper of vengeance for the destruction of her people.
That changes when she takes the warrant on Margaret Jameson, a new kind of stained, one immune to the usual tools of collection. Upon finding her quarry, Talen realizes Margaret isn’t stained at all, but someone worked very hard to make her appear so.
The search for an answer carries the two unlikely partners from the wilds of the Great Plains to the expansive cities of post-Civil War America. There, they learn the truth is much darker than they imagined, and it could mean the death of millions, or even reshape the world itself.
MY REVIEW
Wow, this is a great piece of Weird West.
Amazing worldbuilding (my jam), great characters, incredible vistas (translating this into a visual medium like a movie would actually work), good mix of action and plot, nice magic and nice western.
Full disclosure: Received the book as part of an online Facebook Christmas book party, won the contest on best piece of Western History or something like that. No review required.
****
Final comment (May be considered a spoiler by some)
Goodread only comments since I see this as turning some people off buying the book, and the book really should be bought, especially by those people whom this comment will make them less likely to buy the book.
“Woke” Weird West – this narrative actually acknowledges the systemic racism and misogamy, as well as the War which America still has PTSD from, laying down deep roots to permanently imbedded their poison into our culture. It’s gonna take some mighty and constant tugging to uproot the issues. Generations. Like mint and mimosa.
[Two-Gun Witch is an awesome “weird west” with guns, witches, elves, and the western plains – but it also touched on systemic hatred, the history of bigotry and misogamy, slavery and Jim Crow laws being developed, genocide of indigenous people, dealing with PTSD and other fallout from Civil War, all for the sake of “manifest destiny”.]
Why are books like this important? Sometimes people won’t look in a mirror, but they will visit the funhouse at a carnival – a distorted mirror is still a reflection.
Image by Lance Reis on Unsplash
The woman approached Mave confidently, a raptor on her glove. Around the high-flyer gathered many of the younger members of the aerie, tired one and all from a day on the ground in the fields; the group rested, taking advantage of the large boulders removed from the farming soil and laid alongside the workable plots. Several peach trees among the rocks provided covering from Brita for those who wanted shade after a long day of summer work, while the rest soaked up her warm rays laying upon the boulders.
Though outnumbered, the pale female, unmarked on chest by hint of feathers which decorated the raptor shifters’ arms and bodies, carried no scent of fear.
She carried barely any scent at all, only of the sea after a storm. Salt, water, ozone, and death recently raised from the depths. “Oghan said you were the one to talk to.”
“Oghan?” Mave sat forward from where she had been leaning against her nestmate, Bryce, to study the raptor. “You came back.” The stone wizard had disappeared at the Aviary Gathering, a loss to their clan. His return was most welcome but would no doubt come with costs. Magic never flew a straight path.
Bryce spread his hand against Mave’s back, like a wing of support.
“What do you need to discuss, traveler?”
“I would like to join the aerie.”
(words 226; first published 12/17/2023 – inspired by a Facebook visual prompt for a writer’s group; aim is about 50 words, but I decided to link it to the Raptor by the Sea series.)
Raptors by the Sea Series
Image from Unsplash
Diving into the grass, lightning sizzled overhead. Janice kept rolling, concentrating on her words and hand gestures. Stupid warlock with a wand cutting the casting time in half, but she finally had time to finesse her best spell, a whirlwind of fire. Rising to her knees, she released it at the bastard. Dodge that.
(words 54, first published 8/20/2023)
Photo by Photos_frompasttofuture on Unsplash
Jonathan meandered into the second-floor nursey looking for his wife and their newborn. Obviously the baby had been fussy in the night, and she decided he needed sleep more than her. While he appreciated her concern, her logic didn’t hold up to reality and he would need to remind her, like he did after the birth of all their children, that she was no longer alone in her parenthood. The long nights broken by feedings always reset her back to the amazing self-sufficient, but exhausted, woman Elizabeth had been when they first met.
What he would not remind her of is the fact he was two decades younger than her and could handle lack of sleep better.
Also, he wouldn’t say a thing about how he wasn’t the one who had just given birth six days ago. The last time he tried to argue from that position, she went off on an esoteric rant of the renewal energies from birthing. She lost him between midwifery blessing incantations and timing the birth for maximum astrological benefit.
Shifting back and forth, the rocking chair creaked in the moonlight, the beam creating a shimmer over the person holding the baby on her shoulder. A doting smile began to touch Jon’s lips when a small snort-snore came from the chaise lounge snapped his head to the right where Lizzo slept under a charm quilt her coven had gifted her on their marriage.
Oh, …oh!
Looking back on the indistinct human form in the rocking chair, Jonathan asked, “Abby?”
Not that he didn’t believe his wife and Malcolm when they said the old Henry Plantation Manor came with its own ghost, or when Jonny and Ada filled him in about their garden explorations with their beloved invisible nanny, or Barby went room from room demanding “awBEE!” appear as only a two-year old can.
But, he was a scientist. Seeing things with his own eyes made a difference. Now he got to add ghost to the list of things he knew lived outside of nightmares and late-night television.
The rocking slowed, the shimmer coalesced into something more the shape of a woman then a determined fog. A hollowed voice whispered in the room, sending shivers down the man’s spine, “Master Turning, how you be doing this evening?”
“I’m well.” Jonathan gulped, struggling to pull up everything Lizzo and Mal had told him to do and ignore all the fiction and campfire stories he had absorbed in his twenty-nine years of life. They hadn’t done a full-sit down with him species specific briefing like they had when Elizabeth added dervishes to their Sparkle Network Services, so it was not as easy to do as with their normal supernatural clients. “Emma, okay?”
The fog-light shape sent a limb rolling up the infant’s back to cradle the head in a pillow of mist before standing, Emma hovering midair against the apparition’s form. Emma bounced a few centimeters up and down, rocking back and forth over four and a half feet above the floor.
Jonathan fought the urge to reach out and grasp his child.
“Just a little gassy tonight,” the voice seemed to be the echo behind words never spoken. “Kept the mistress up until I insisted she lay down a moment.”
Jonathan stifled a louder laugh to a quick chuckle. He could not picture anyone, let alone a whisp – a real whisp of a ghost – forcing Lizzo to do anything. “That I would like to learn.”
“Not something being good for a man to know.” The shimmer moved side to side, letting Jonathan see Emma’s blue eyes were wide open but calm and taking in what little a few days old infant could see. “There are things woman folk just need from women.”
His eyes closed for a moment and the mundane man breathed in and out slowly. His wife gave up so much to be with him, for a second he imagined her old coven filling the manor, visiting for the holidays and passing the infant around. He hoped they came for the Solstice; the new High Priestess didn’t approve of him and often refused given permission for members to visit because of his “contamination.”
“A pity.” Jonathan approached the circle of the moonbeam where the ghost stood. “But thank you for being there for her. Would you like to tag out?” He held out his arms cautiously.
“Thank you, Master Turning. Dawn is coming soon, and I did want to get the meals set up for the day while I could.” The shape that the family named Abigail laid Emma gently in his arms, brushing her frigid essence against his limbs in the transfer.
Worried, he pulled the child against him and touched her cheeks for temperature, finding the infant warm, even a little hot and sweaty on the side which had been against the ghostly shoulder as though it had been against a human body. “I really appreciate all you are doing, by the way Miss Abigail. The children love you, and you have made my wife’s life a lot easier.”
The vapor sparkled slightly pink a moment before fading to nothing.
(words 857, first published 4/30/2023)
Series: Under Contract
1. N is for Noise (4/16/2023)
2. Q is for Quicken (4/19/2023)
3. Y is for Yield (4/28/2023)
4. Z is for Zzzz (4/30/2023)