Sweet Kitten, you won the e-Book. Check the comments for how to get it. Congratulations!
Enjoy the blurb and excerpt from my new erotic urban fantasy, BEING FAMILIAR WITH A WITCH. It just came out January 25th, and already I got one great review for it. The excerpt is G-rated, though the eBook is not, but if you want to read a more explicit one you can read it at Helen Madden's Blog where I stopped on my blog tour yesterday.
Today, I am giving away a download of it. All you have to do is leave a comment. Then come back tomorrow to this blog and check the comments to see who won it. I will leave a last comment of the winner, plus telling them to contact me at my email that I will leave.
ISBN: 978-1-60659-118-5
Buy at PHAZE BOOKS
Tina doesn't know she's a witch. It will take Charun, her demon Familiar, to convince her to make love with him and let loose her witch powers.
For if she doesn't, then with the demon army about to bring Armageddon to the Mortal Realm on Halloween, she won't stand a chance in Hell.
Some days it didn’t pay to get out of bed. For Tina, it didn’t pay even to get up for some weeks, never mind days. Worse, she didn’t have the comfort of the erotic dreams she used to have, with the same sexy man who starred in them.
Thank goodness, in a couple hours she would have the week off from work. Soon it would be Halloween, her most favorite holiday of all. Last week she had decorated her house, making both the front of her house and the yard spooky. Two unlit Jack-O-Lanterns sat on the steps of her front porch, their expressions empty of vivid light. Until Halloween night, when she would stick a candle inside each one and, with a flick of a lighter, set them a glow.
She had bought bags of candy a month ago in anticipation of the kids in costume. She always dressed as a witch. Though why she did, she never understood. It just it felt right for her to be costumed as a witch. Using a big metal cauldron she found years ago in an antique store, she would fill it to the brim with the candy and wait for the costumers to trip up the porch steps to her, uttering “Trick or Treat!” in loud, tinny voices. She would cackle and offer each child to take some goodies from her cauldron if they dared. The neighborhood looked forward to this every year, and the troop of children to her place grew each year.
But even her favorite holiday didn’t alleviate the problems at the bookstore today. She stopped daydreaming as the bell above the bookstore door rang. She grimaced as she saw the unhappy lines pinched in the face of the lady who stepped inside. A hat that should have been pert and cute sagged on top of mousy brown hair drawn back in a tight bun. The woman marched up to the counter and slapped a book down on the desk, hard. Tina frowned as she didn’t like seeing books abused. Then the woman stabbed her finger repeatedly onto the book.
“This was sold to me by one of the clerks here a week ago, promising it would make my husband amorous.” The lady snorted as she glared from behind Coke-bottle glasses. “All he did was read it for the ‘dirty’ pictures as he called them, and then fell asleep.” She tossed the cash receipt at Tina. The paper drifted down to the counter, just an inch from falling off at the edge. “I want my money back for this trash.”
“That’s no problem at all, ma’am.” Tina opened the cash register and withdrew some dollar bills and a few coins. She handed them over to the lady, who opened her purse and chucked it all inside. Then the lady stomped out of the bookstore, the door banging shut behind her and causing the bell to clang for a long time. Tina gave a sigh.
After that, it seemed every nasty customer in the world had stepped into the place. Each and every one had a complaint. One man demanded the book he swore he called two weeks ago to order, but nothing was in the ordering forms for it. An elderly lady didn’t like the racy and very erotic romance section wedged next to the sweet romances she normally bought. She claimed that the covers with the naked men gave her the flutters. Tina had noticed earlier that the lady stood in front of that section for quite a long while, but she didn’t say anything, just uttered how sorry she was. She told her that they were romances, too, and her manager had wanted them there. Her nose in the air, the bag of four sweet romances tucked under an arm, the woman hobbled out of the store without a backward glance.
A portly gentleman waddled in, wanting the latest thriller that had been advertised on a commercial on television last night. He couldn’t understand when Tina explained that it wouldn’t be out for another week. It had been on TV, so that meant it was out in his opinion. He clomped out, saying that the bookstore down the road was a better one anyway and always had what he wanted in stock. Tina just shook her head.
There had been more of the same thing all day long. Finally, she saw the last customer to the door and, with a sigh, locked up. Then she staggered through the automated motions of locking up the cash in the safe in the back of the store, cleaning up the bookstore, putting back misplaced books and magazines, and dumping and cleaning out the coffee pot in the break room. Grabbing her purse from her locker, she left by the back door, locked it, and then walked over to her car parked in back. The sound of thunder rumbled just then and she stopped to look up at the night sky, devoid of stars and the moon. She heard another blast of thunder. Saw a flash of lightening, too, as it lit up the area.
Great. The news had been wrong last night when they reported that the last of rain had left the area. Hopefully, it wouldn’t start until she made it home.
She climbed in and started the engine. The car roared to life and she turned on her windshield wipers, thanks to the terrible storm that hit just then. She drove down the alley and into traffic.
The rain came down in a torrential downpour, making her wipers work hard, but still she had problems seeing the road. It didn’t help much that it was also night. So dark, lights from oncoming cars shimmered, and she took care to make sure she didn’t weave over into their lane. The windshield fogged up from the humidity, and kept her wiping at the glass so she could see. Doing this for the umpteenth time, she didn’t notice the cat, not until her car was almost upon it.
It was black as a dark and stormy night, quoting a bad beginning to a book. The cat’s eyes shone in the brightness of her headlights, eerie like lamplights. She brought her car to a screeching halt, the car’s tires skidding for a bit. Her chest smacked into the steering wheel and she bit her lip to keep from crying out from the pain. She jammed the car in park and, leaving the engine running, climbed out of it to check on the feline. She peered at the front of her car and under it, but no cat. The rain drenched her within seconds as she tried to see if she could find it in the immediate area.
She couldn’t see the dratted thing.
“Kitty, kitty,” she called, “here, kitty-kitty. Nice puss.”
Thinking that maybe it had gotten away and knowing the storm made it impossible to locate it, Tina opened the driver’s side door and heard a plaintive meow. Something streaked past her and dove into the car. Freaked out, she screamed. Then she realized as she looked inside she saw a very wet black cat sitting on the bucket seat on the passenger side. It stared back at her with large, luminous eyes that seemed to glow. She got into the car and shut the door behind her. She felt her seat become very wet from the water running off her, and she shivered from cold.
Attempting to wring out her wet hair, she stared at the cat as it settled down and began to dry itself with its tongue. She sighed.
“Well, I see I have a passenger. You can stay in here and ride with me to my house, but cat, you are not coming inside my place. Hear me? You can remain on my front porch until the rain stops.”
The cat appeared unconcerned and kept lashing its tongue over its wet fur, though the tail lashed. Then it paused and looked up at her. She saw for the first time that it had very pretty yellow eyes, actually more the color of amber. They were large and round, eclipsing its face. For a minute, she seemed to drown in their depths. She blinked, breaking the spell. The cat ducked its head back down to its side and went back to drying itself. Its sharp ears perked up, twitching. Its purring filled the interior of her car.
Tina took the car out of park and maneuvered it back onto the road. The downpour had calmed to a misting. She kept her eyes on the road, ignoring the smell of wet fur and how cold she felt. She would take the occasional glimpse of the cat from the corner of her eye and see that it was lying down and purring. It should have bothered her. After all, what stray cat would be so well behaved in a strange car, especially not in a cat carrier? Except, she accepted it all. It felt comfortable, as if that cat belonged with her.
On Writing Being Familiar With a Witch:
When this idea came for an erotic urban fantasy popped into my head, I saw this demon who could take human form, plus other shapes too, and a human woman who doesn’t know about the destiny she has as a witch. Not just becoming a witch, but one who must fight a demonic army to stop Armageddon, too.
The story too off and I typed it up. At first, it was a 10,000 word story for a ePublisher who had closed not long after I joined them. Lucky for me, they never sent me the contract and the urban fantasy was still mine. When I joined Phaze, I knew there was more to this story between Charun and Tina. And so, I began to turn this short story into a short novel.
I found that there’s more to tell about Tina and Charun, that it will take their love for each other to halt Hell from winning the battle this time around and causing Armageddon from happening. It’s more than an erotic tale full of sex, it’s how one witch must join with her Familiar to prevent the end of the world.
I hope you take the time to get this urban fantasy and check it out. I started working on the sequel to it, tentatively titled “A Familiar Tango With Hell. For in my head there are more stories to tell about Charun and Tina. And I hope readers out there will embrace them, for they’re quite a couple.
Sapphire Phelan
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Go beyond the usual, instead take the unusual that stretches the boundaries and find romance with Sapphire Phelan's aliens, werewolves, vampires, fairies, and other supernatural/otherworldly heroes and heroines.
