Wednesday, February 20, 2013

Moonsongs, Book 1 and 2 Blog Tour
Excerpt and Giveaway

The Moonsong Saga blog tour is hosted by CBB Book Promotions
See the full tour schedule HERE

Moonsongs is a series of short episodic urban fantasy novellas about a lonely girl with purple hair who discovers that she is part of a rich tradition of hunters, and maybe her life has a bigger purpose after all. What kind of monsters she's hunting, you'll have to read the books to find out. 


Blood Fugue
by E.J. Wesley
Published: By the author September 24, 2012
Category: Urban Fantasy **NOT YA**
Series: Moonsongs, Book 1 (47 pages, each book is a short novella)

ABOUT BLOOD FUGUE: “Some folks treated the past like an old friend. The memories warmed them with fondness for what was, and hope for what was to come. Not me. When I thought of long ago, my insides curdled, and I was left feeling sour and wasted.”

Jenny Schmidt is a young woman with old heartaches. A small town Texas girl with big city attitude, she just doesn’t fit in. Not that she has ever tried.

Life has pummeled her heart into one big, lonely callus. She has no siblings, both parents were dead by sixteen, and her last grandparent—and caretaker—was in the ground before she turned twenty-one. She’s the last living member of her immediate family. Or so she thinks…

“We found my ‘grandfather’ sitting at his dining room table. An entire scorched pot of coffee dangled from his shaky hand. His skin was the ashen gray shade of thunderclouds, not the rich mocha from the photo I’d seen. There were dark blue circles under each swollen red eye. A halo of white hair skirted his bald head, a crown of tangles and mats. Corpses had more life in them.

Suddenly, instead of burying it with the dead, Jenny is forced to confront the past. Armed only with an ancient family journal, her rifle, and an Apache tomahawk, she must save her grandfather’s life and embrace her dangerous heritage. Or be devoured by it.

Blood Fugue can be found at: Amazon | Goodreads 

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Witch's Nocturne
by E.J. Wesley
Published: By the author December 2012
Category: Urban Fantasy **NOT YA**
Series: Moonsongs, Book 2 (73 pages, each book is a short novella)

ABOUT WITCH'S NOCTURNE: After receiving an ancient tribal journal from her grandfather, Jenny is sent on a mission of discovery in an attempt to unravel clues to her family's monster hunting past. The journey becomes more than academic when she is asked to confront a coven of dangerous witches who plan to cast an insidious spell on the plains of West Texas.

Witch's Nocturne is the second of the Moonsongs Books, a series of paranormal-horror-action novelettes by author E.J. Wesley. These stories contain language and content better suited for mature readers.

Witch’s Nocturne can be found at: 




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EXCERPT FROM BLOOD FUGUE: 


Smoldering in an auburn and gold shroud, the sun retreated behind a hill on the far horizon. Even the stubborn oaks and stout cedar trees along either side of the highway bristled in the growing wind. A small cyclone of blowing sand and leaves lifted across the road in front of us. The temperature had dropped twenty degrees in less than two hours.

Things changed in a hurry in West Texas.

After we’d left Merrill’s, I’d gone home to switch clothes and pick up my old lever action .30-30 rifle. Realizing I’d probably be up in the tree stand for a few hours and not see a thing, I hadn’t been in any real hurry. But now, with my slippery hands on the steering wheel, I was getting anxious. As the afternoon waned, time seemed precious, like I was racing the dark or, if Grandpa was right, speeding toward my destiny.

I stomped on the gas. Like a whip-cracked beast, the pickup’s engine roared in defiance before yielding some extra mph.

“Sun’ll be down soon. Then it’s game on,” I said to Marshall. “Thanks again for tagging along.”

“Don’t get too excited. I’m staying in the pickup, remember? And you promised to go to Lubbock with me, which didn’t hurt your case.” Marshall didn’t look away from the frayed paperback in his hand, but he did pat the first aid kit next to him. “Besides, I’ve seen you in action. You may need my professional help before the night is over.”

I frowned, hoping he was wrong about the first aid. “You know I hate Lubbock. That was dirty pool.”



Little crystalline spouts of my breath floated in the gloom around me. I’d been in the tree stand thirty minutes and was already itching to call it a night. My legs ached. This wasn’t one of those cushy three-person stands. This one wasn’t much more than a shrapnel-like piece of metal jutting out of the bark about twenty feet off the ground. The chains holding it in place were rusty enough to give me pause when, rifle slung over my back, I’d scaled the tree. I didn’t weigh much, and the stand hadn’t looked like it would hold much. Luckily it had. Standing erect, my back had bonded with tree ever since.

“He knew we were coming,” I muttered to no one, wishing for the hundredth time I was in the warm pickup with Marshal.

We’d gotten to the farm at dusk, just like Grandpa had asked. We banged on his door for ten minutes with no answer. Deciding he’d probably just gone to bed early, I finally gave up and took my spot in the tree.

His absence had been gnawing at me ever since. Why go through all the trouble of coming of out of hiding from faking your death, contacting your long lost granddaughter for the first time in fifteen years, asking for her help to kill a dangerous animal, and then not be around to see it done?

I looked in the direction of the corral. A single halogen yard light several feet outside the fence had flickered to life at sunset. It didn’t illuminate the entire holding area, but shone some light on the corner of the pen where Thunder’s rotting body was heaped. I spotted what I thought were the gray chunks of his remains in the yellow light and my stomach clinched. I struggled to make anything else out in the dimness.

My vision took a moment to steady through the scope. Flies buzzed, although they were more sluggish than they’d been earlier in the day. They wouldn’t survive this cold night. The thought prompted me to pull the hood of my sweatshirt over my head, hoping to warm my numb ears and cheeks.

I looked down the scope for a long while without seeing anything. Then, in the shadows beyond the horse, two golden eyes appeared. The body was completely obscured by darkness, but the eyes were the only things I really cared about. They never blinked, only stared straight ahead, directly into my scope. I don’t know how, but I could see them, and I knew what the animal was feeling. He was mad. Not crazed, but angry.

My imagination filled in the gaps. I visualized his pupils contracting and expanding, the burning colors of the irises swirling around them like agitated clouds. I could imagine his gaze shifting with my movement, as if he were counting the breaths escaping my lungs. In my mind, I could almost feel the ground around him vibrating with a swelling growl, and hear the rumble disturbing the otherwise silent night.

Blood thundered in my ears as I came to one simple, terrifying conclusion: malice. The animal wanted blood, and he aimed to get it in the most violent of ways. 

I shouldn’t be here. That thing isn’t--I caught myself.  I'd almost thought human. Of course, he wasn’t human. People didn’t gut horses with teeth and claws.



About the author:

Born and raised in Oklahoma, E.J. grew up in a land of good earth and better people. He holds degrees in psychology and counseling, but prefers to spend his time in the heads of imaginary people to real ones. He writes and lives in South Texas, and loves to chat about movies, books, music, food, and family.

Find the Author: GoodReads | Facebook Twitter | Blog



GIVEAWAYS 
1) Tour wide rafflecopter Giveaway (see below). 
2) Two random commenters will be selected to win an ebook copy of each book.  
Open Internationally.  Must be 16 or older to enter.


3 comments:

  1. Hi Lauren! Just wanted to say thank you for joining the tour and sharing the excerpt/giveaway. Very much appreciated! :-)

    EJ

    ReplyDelete
  2. Thanks so much for hosting a stop on the tour Lauren!

    ReplyDelete
  3. This series sounds so cool! Love this creepy excerpt. Thanks for sharing!

    ReplyDelete

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