Title: RAVEN’S MOON
Author: J.B. Dane
Genre: Urban fantasy PI mystery comedy
Book Blurb:
Otherworld evil is loose in the real world. Bram Farrell, Private Investigator, must track it down and destroy it before it destroys him.
Bram has starred in twenty bestselling novels by writer—and witch—Calista Amberson. Her fans love the tall, dark, and handsome PI who vanquishes supernatural bad guys using his magical powers. So, when Calista uses her magic to pull Bram from his fictional world into real-world, modern-day Detroit, she rocks both worlds. Every supernatural being on Earth felt his arrival in this dimension. They don't trust Calie’s intentions and Bram doesn't either. When the supernatural community hands him the job of discovering who killed the beings in the real world that match those he killed in each volume of The Raven Tales, he takes on the task. It’s a job he’s done in twenty books—he’s up to the familiar challenge. Bram’s investigation turns up a lot of suspicious characters: grouchy bar-owning trolls, a vampire godfather, a couple of murderous x-cage fighters, a suspicious minister—and the Devil himself. Things are getting dicey. Which means Bram could use some help with this job—but whom can he trust?
Excerpt:
In the center of the meadow, a huge buck raised its head at my entry, sized me up, and lowered an impressive rack of antlers threateningly in my direction.
Time to leave, I thought.
The buck thought differently. He pawed the ground.
“Easy, boy,” I murmured. Whether I was giving myself a pep talk or attempting to reassure the buck is a toss-up.
In any case, the words were translated as fightin’ ones.
Bodies began raining from the branches overhead. Others erupted from the bushes on either side of me. One sprang from the ground before me, his clothing consisting of squares of turf lashed to his body with something that looked like raffia.
A short branch, not entirely shed of leaves, smacked my already injured jaw and then moved on to berate my neck.
“Hey!” I yelled. Like that was going to stop the attack. I ripped the weapon from the attacker’s mitt and tossed it aside. “I just want—”
That was when the unknown troop used the head of one of their number as a battering ram, hitting me squarely in the solar plexus.
For a second or two I thought I’d go down, but the terrain came to my rescue when my back hit one of the stripling trees. I might not be down, but I certainly was not winning. Another of the attackers had found a sturdier branch and was having a go at my ribs. Yet another sank teeth into my forearm, while a third gnawed on an ankle.
When the ambulatory battering ram sprang to his feet, I met him with my unencumbered foot, inadvertently sending him sailing six feet back into the forest.
I turned to ridding myself of clingers. A fist pounded down on the arm-nosher had his teeth briefly sinking deeper into my skin, but then he too fell away, swooning like a faint-hearted damsel. I yanked the ankle biter off and held him up by . . . well, I suppose it was by the scruff of his neck.
“Knock it off!” I shouted at him.
In answer, he thumbed his nose and then stuck out his fists in a boxer’s stance. The fact that I still held him dangling three feet off the forest floor didn’t seem to faze him at all.
Whatever the thing was, it was fearless. Or stupid. He was humanoid but appeared to be a combination of mushroom, tree bark, and moss. Short feet kicked as he swung suspended, still trying to engage me.
“Transgressor!” he shouted.
A host of voices rose from unseen throats in the woods, echoing his cry. “Transgressor!”
“Transgressor, my ass!” I snarled and shook my captive. He swayed like a marionette with half its strings cut. “This is private property, dude. If anyone’s transgressing, it’s you and your butt-ugly buddies. This is Calista Amberson’s estate.”
It made no difference to the runt. Or to his friends. Those I’d tossed aside regrouped with a half dozen of their buddies and were stalking forward in formation, armed now with last season’s antler castoffs.
“Release our comrade, transgressor!” snapped the one who’d led the charge.
I’m usually not very good at following orders, but this one I couldn’t resist.
“As you wish,” I said and granted it by tossing the ragged little imbecile dangling from my hand at them.
The entire group collapsed and rolled off the path.
They were game little . . . er . . . whatevers. Only took them forty-five seconds to sort themselves out and snag those antler weapons once more.
“Cool it with the centurion maneuvers,” I demanded. “I’m bigger than you are. Rather than crack your heads together, I’d prefer it if you’d just talk to me.”
“If the lord so allows,” they said in unison, thumped fists to their chests, and looked past me to the buck in the meadow. Unconcerned with our comedic battle, he’d gone back to grazing.
At a signal, most of the patrol melted back into the brush, leaving three to wait with me.
The buck bided his time before condescending to look up. He nodded regally, then went back to having lunch.
“You may advance ten paces, transgressor,” the leader of the remaining soldiers announced.
“Thank you,” I said, but when I stepped back onto the path, three points of sharpened antler poked into the center of my back.
I swung partially back to keep them in sight.
“Dudes, I’m unarmed!” I insisted.
“You lie, transgressor. You have two arms and have used them against us.”
“In self-defense!”
The snort the speaker gave clearly showed we were not in accord on that.
“You are the transgressor!” the leader’s hoarse, gravelly voice snarled. “How dare you enter the high lord’s presence without being summoned?”
“You’re the trespasser here, pal. This is my aunt’s property, and if she found you here . . . well, I wouldn’t envy you. She’s a real bitch when riled.”
The leader frowned and dropped back briefly to give me a reproving poke with his weapon.
“You are not of her house,” he said. “There is no blood connection.”
“I’m something new,” I offered. “You’ve never heard of anything like me, but then I’ve never run into anything like you either. What the hell are you?”
The commander appeared to have training in interrogation. He ignored my question and produced one of his own. “What are you, intruder? You are not golem, but you don’t smell like a human.”
“I asked first,” I insisted, mostly because I really didn’t have a good answer for him. Was I a fiction or a faux human?
“It is true,” an underling said. “He did ask first.”
“And the first rule of the forest is politeness,” the third guard reminded.
It was the first I’d heard of that rule, but what the heck!
“We are the theophylaktos.”
Never heard of them? Me neither. The word is Greek and means God Guard. It sounds more like a disease to me.
Buy Links (including Goodreads and BookBub):
If you could dress up as anything or anyone this Halloween, what or who would it be and why?
I have to admit that if pushed into a costume for All Hallows, I would lean toward proper Victorian Steampunk heroine. That means, my corset would be inside the dress, the skirt would be dusting the pavement, and I’d be stealing one of the Tesla guns from Warehouse 13 to tuck in my feather bedecked hat with possibly a backup in my bustle, and a knife strapped to my leg. Well, maybe both legs. A girl can never be overly weaponized in a Steampunk adventure, can she? And one never knows whether the beings at a Halloween bash are in costume or have come as they actually are.
Explain why your featured book is a treat to read:
RAVEN’S MOON is the first novel in my Raven Tales urban fantasy series, and it plays out in the days going into All Hallows, as well as the night itself. It not only has magic in the mix, it has a hellhound who prefers to manifest as a black and tan dachshund or, when a confrontation requires it, to a black and tan Great Dane. It has succubae, a witches’ coven where only the leader is overly arrogant and really dangerous. It has the Devil visiting, though probably looking more like a blond Tom Ellis-y than monstrously, although Lucifer hadn’t made it to series TV yet when I originally spun Samael into the cast. There are cold cases to solve, assassinations to be avoided, there’s…Okay, I confess. There are a lot of snarky lines and comedic situations, too. RAVEN’S MOON is really a treat to read and then reread for the hero alone. A smart ass PI whose previous only existence had been between the pages of twenty books where he was lucky to limp away on the final page. Bram Farrell is most definitely a scrumptious treat. And not fattening in the least.
Giveaway –
One lucky reader will win a $100 Amazon gift card.
Open internationally.
Runs October 1 – 31, 2024
Drawing will be held on November 1, 2024.
Author Biography:
J.B. Dane is the author of the urban fantasy PI mystery comedy series, The Raven Tales, which includes novels published by Burns and Lea Books, and a series of Indie published novellas and short stories that are prequels and also "between the books" adventures of her MC, Bram Farrell. The 3rd novel in the series, RAVEN'S EDGE, was honored with a spot in the Winner’s Circle for 2022 at N.N. Lights’ Book Heaven. The 4th novel, RAVEN CROSSES THE LINE, snagged a finalist spot in 2023. Quite a few 5* reviews have followed for the novels, in particular, singing praises that should make her blush though she’s too busy proudly polishing her nails against her lapel to do so. She also writes shorter fantasy fiction, many tales of which have appeared in anthologies, particularly her Nick Claus, North Pole Security stories. She writes historical and contemporary romantic mystery and speculative twisted 19th century fiction under two different names, just to confuse people. Or so they probably think.
Social Media Links:
Facebook JBDane Mystery and Fantasy http://bit.ly/2GJtejL
Twitter @JBDaneWriter