Halloween is a great time to read a spooky book and get in the mood for the upcoming festivities. (Hello, Edgar Allan Poe, I know you born to celebrate this holiday.) This year I'm blessed to have stories in not one, but TWO chilling anthologies: Cursed! and Moonlight And Claws. In the next two days, I'll tell you a little about each one below and each of my stories that are included. I'll also give you a snippet/sneak peek of those stories!
Today, I'll talk about CURSED!
This Halloween Anthology has six authors and six spooky stories. My story in this collection is The Bone Bride and it's set in the same world as my upcoming novel, Raven Heart.
The one-line blurb: A high-born girl learns she’s been sold as bride to a dead goblin prince.
A short excerpt from The Bone Bride:
There were tables filled with food, the sort of delicacies that Rowan had always been warned about—things that could enchant a girl so deeply that she would never find her way home again. Cakes and pastries and fruit from across the Shadowsea, sugared tangerines and salted beef and sweet buttered bread, glasses of wine that never went empty. And music, so tempting, she couldn’t hold still. As soon as her feet touched the ground in the grassy circle, she started to dance. She only paused long enough to take a slice of meat or a piece of fruit or a sip of wine, then she would laugh and start dancing again.
’Twas a magic circle, sure enough, but what sort of magic she didn’t know. Not Brightwitch magic, that only took place during the day. But this didn’t seem like Nightwitch magic either. Granted their magic took place during the night, but it was almost always done to confuse and torment humans.
Rowan wasn’t human anymore.
All around her, beautiful women and handsome men danced. She couldn’t see Prince Blackroot, although she knew he was here. The moment they had arrived, a dashing king wearing a golden crown had taken Blackroot by the arm and escorted him to the edge of the clearing. Now and then she could see the king—he would nod and smile benevolently at her—but the dancing crowd prevented her from seeing the Goblin boy who had saved her from being trapped in place for all of eternity.
She didn’t know where she was but it felt like Lightland, the place the saints and the priests all told little children about.
Except, now and then, it felt like something else.
Something horrible.
Every half an hour or so, all the dancers would come to a halt, unable to move. Then, the changing patterns on the Bone Brides’ dresses all became the same.
They all showed a horrific war that was going to forever change the land of the living and the land of the dead. And Rowan could tell by the events—which began with Rowan’s death—that this war was coming very soon.
And here are short blurbs of all the stories in that collection:
The Bone Bride: Unholy matrimony isn't the only thing to fear this Halloween.
Touch Of The Old Gods: A village under siege must make an unholy alliance in the hopes of survival.
Illusion At Midnight: A vampire searches for his mate, but she's not interested in spending eternity with a bloodsucker.
The Genie's Curse: After a genie is bound and cursed, she realizes she will do anything to have her freedom restored.
Cursed Birthday: A female child is only born once every 100 years—some say she's a blessing, others say she's a curse.
Secrets Of The Grave: When a ghost tour goes wrong, unwelcome secrets of the grave are unleashed.
You can purchase CURSED! here.
Tomorrow, I'll tell you about Moonlight And Claws!
