Welcome Today's Featured Author
Dora Badger!!
We’ve all heard tales about folks
who run away to join the circus…but in Charley Cat’s Carnival, they’re dying to
get out.
A Dark and Bloody
Business
is an introduction to the world of Charley Cat’s Carnival. It’s the first short
piece in a series of 18 planned novellas, which will follow the Carnival across
the Americas from the late 1300s until the present day. The series is broken
down into three- or four-book cycles, each of which represents a particular
stop. The first stop is set in Piquette, Kentucky. This first cycle follows the
Carnival’s visits to Piquette over a hundred years and more, from the day
Charley Cat agrees to help the town grow to the day one of his carnies learns
the truth about the terrible things the townsfolk have done to survive.
Future cycles will track the Carnival from
its origins as a loose conglomeration of myths made flesh in the late 14th
century, to its ferocious 21st-century battle with the nameless gods
of the west coast. If they all stand together, the Carnival can prevail– but Charley
Cat’s choices have thrown him into conflict with some of the most trusted
members of his troupe, including the only human man he’s ever truly loved. When
they finally reach the Pacific Northwest, there may not be enough of the
Carnival left for them to fight their way back across the Rockies.
A Dark and Bloody
Business is
a standalone short story – so you don’t have to know anything about the series
to enjoy it. I’m trying to work with Amazon
to make it permafree, but until they do it’s currently being offered at no
charge on Barnes
& Noble and Smashwords.
Teaser for A Dark and Bloody Business:
It’s late summer in 1901 and Joseph Albers is
a man in trouble: he bet everything on a Kentucky coal mine, but soon after his
mine collapsed the family and friends who followed him from Atlanta began
falling to smallpox and yellow fever. In a desperate attempt to save what’s
left of his town – and his dream of making it big in coal country – Joseph
hunkers down at the crossroads, hoping for a midnight meeting with the devil.
Instead Joseph encounters the ancient,
ageless god Charley Cat, and finds himself surrounded by the demons, legends,
and creatures of myth who travel with him. By the time their parley has ended,
the fate of Piquette will have changed forever.
Excerpt from A Dark and Bloody Business:
Hungry.
Joseph Albers used the tip
of his heavy hickory cane to scratch the word into the packed dirt of the
crossroads for the third time, and for the third time he scuffed it out at
once. Bullfrogs splashed in an unseen creek at the bottom of the drop to the south
and grumbled in thick hiccoughs which hammered the base of his skull until his
eyes watered. Insects sang in the thick woods crowding the road. Their rippling
calls sent his exhausted mind into painful swoops with each buzzing, chittering
crescendo. His chest stung where the fist-sized lump of coal dangled inside the
rough woolen bag he’d strung around his neck, both his hands and arms up past
the elbows were a mess of blisters from poison ivy, the yarrow blooms he held
were already wilting in the early summer heat, and the devil he’d come to meet
was due any moment. Despite all that, after a full two weeks of fasting – and
those coming on the heels of a month of raging illness, far too much death, and
far too little food – Joseph could think of only one thing.
Joseph scratched the word
in the road again. Surely midnight was almost here. He ran the tip of his cane
over it, carving his hunger into the center of the crossroads although he knew
full well no matter how hard he pressed, the word would disappear with only a
few passes of his cane or his foot. If only he could wipe away the hollow
screams of his belly as easily as he erased the word from the dirt, he would
be—
Joseph paused. A tense
emptiness crept toward him from the west: the insects along Firedown Road were
falling silent. As the hush moved toward Joseph, the bullfrogs barked in
surprise and went still. Behind the silence, a hulking, creaking noise began to
rise.
Past the far end of the
crossroads, a hundred feet or so along the edge of Firedown Road where the
carriage turnaround clearing ended and the rich Kentucky forest began again in
earnest, a brilliant, flickering beast moved just inside the treeline. It was
the size of a bear and slunk along with its body hunched down in the way of
wolves. The trees shuddered with each of its heavy steps. A curiously sweet
odor of smoldering leaves drifted on the wind. It was impossible to see the
thing clearly through the forest, or perhaps it was simply that its form
shifted with each step. Even from here, Joseph could tell the advancing brute
wasn’t causing the lumbering noise he heard; that sound moved more rapidly, and
came from much farther along Firedown. Deeper shadows loomed along the
tree-shadowed road, too many and too close together for him to make out in the
dark.
Trust that damned Dickie
Beaubeau to leave out the most important part: when that sanctimonious con man
told Joseph the secret of Hudsonville’s success, he hadn’t mentioned that the
crossroads demon would bring an entire infernal host.
Note form the Author:
Most
of the Charley Cat stories are inspired by my family. My uncles and my
parents all worked in traveling carnivals for a number of years during
the 60s and 70s (my parents even took me along as a baby), and a couple
of my uncles continued with carnival or state fair work through the 80s.
I grew up hearing about the things they’d done and seen during a period
that arguably spanned the last good years of the traveling carnival
business. I’ve always wanted to find a way to use fiction to explore
some of those stories I’ve been hearing all of my life. For this series,
I’m also weaving in my lifelong fascination with other stories that
people have told one another throughout human history. The myths,
legends, and plain old tall tales we share are said to take on lives of
their own at a certain point; it just makes sense to me that if they
were ever to meet up, they’d roam around together and do their best to
keep a sense of wonder alive in the world.
Where to find Dora’s books:
Barnes & Noble: http://www.barnesandnoble.com/s/dora+badger
Smashwords: https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/573481
Where to find Dora’s short
stories:
QuarterReads: https://quarterreads.com/writer.php?id=393
About Dora Badger:
Dora Badger is a writer and web
designer living in Detroit. She has worked as an editor and reviewer for a
number of small presses and online magazines. Dora is the author of the blog Menace and Whimsy, where she links
you to dark fiction finds from around the internet.
Dora has had short stories
published in A cappella Zoo, 22 Quick Shivers,
FLAPPERHOUSE, Dreampress' Ténèbres 2015, and many other publications. Some
of her shorter pieces are also available on QuarterReads and Wattpad. She is
currently at work on Uncurled, a
barely pre-apocalyptic novel set in the heart of Motown.
Where to find Dora:
Blog: Menace & Whimsy – http://www.menaceandwhimsy.com
Twitter: http://twitter.com/dorabadger
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/dora.badger
Google Plus: https://plus.google.com/u/0/+DoraBadger
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