UPDATE: Cindi has won the Cupcakes (etc) eARC from last week – YAY!!
The following is a (approx.) 450 word excerpt from my upcoming release, Cupcakes, Trinkets & Other Deadly Magic. Want to read more? Comment on this post to win a prerelease ebook (eARC) with your email address (e.g. name AT gmail DOT com). A new winner will be randomly selected every Wednesday throughout June. An excerpt and chance to win will be posted every Wednesday in June.
Excerpt #1
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“Sex in a Cup,” the customer across the display counter requested. His voice was laced with as much innuendo as he could muster.
I reached for and automatically boxed this ninth cupcake — more chocolate butter icing with a wallop of cinnamon and cocoa in the batter. I ignored the come-on — with a smile that indicated my delight over his exuberance for my cupcakes, but which thwarted his attempt to start something other than buying them. The customer looked familiar, like maybe he’d been in the bakery a few times before. The vampire, however, was new. What the hell was a full-blood vampire doing in Vancouver anyway?
The vampire wasn’t interested in the child, whose mother had lifted her back onto her stool and directed her attention to the remainder of her cupcake. No one else seemed to notice the striking bloodsucker at the window, but then again, most people couldn’t see magic as well as I could. That was my little bit of talent. Well, that and the trinkets I made from magical bits I happened upon, but they weren’t powerful or useful. Just pretty bits to hang in a window and chime in the breeze.
One Rapture in a Cup, a yellow/chocolate swirl cake with cream cheese chocolate icing; a Buzz in a Cup, a mocha fudge cake with mocha butter icing; and an Ecstasy in a Cup, a double chocolate cake with lemon butter icing, rounded out the customer’s order. He liked chocolate almost as much as I did. Or he had a thing for anything provocatively named.
I crossed to the till, weaving for a second time around Bryn and Todd, who were moving a hell of a lot faster than me to fulfill customer orders. But then, being human, they weren’t distracted by the vampire examining my trinkets through the window.
I didn’t know vampires were attracted by shiny things, or I wouldn’t have hung so many in the front window. I really should pay more attention to Gran’s lessons. Too bad my grandmother was currently surfing in Tofino — yes, at sixty. The vampire might not be so bold confronted by a full-blood witch. I was only half, through my mother. I also had my mother’s eyes, medium blue or indigo, depending on whether a part-time guitar-playing poet was immortalizing them or not. I didn’t know any guitar players. I also didn’t inherit the Godfrey petite stature, pert nose, or magical prowess.
My father was some Australian backpacker, who my mother left — at sixteen — before she even knew she was pregnant. So all I’d inherited from him was my golden locks and sun-kissed skin. It didn’t bother me much, not even knowing my father’s last name or whereabouts. But then, I had Gran, and Gran was better than any other family in the world.
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Comment below to win an exclusive prerelease copy of Cupcakes, Trinkets & Other Deadly Magic!! New winner every Wednesday in June!!
