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Thursday, October 15, 2015

Featured Author: Dora Badger

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:
Amazon: http://www.amazon.com/Dora-Badger/e/B00EWXTRW8/

Where to find Dora’s short stories:


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




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