Today’s excerpt comes from THE SILVER MIST.
Buy links:
KINDLE | NOOK | iBOOKS | KOBO | PRINT
UK:
GERMANY:
CANADA:
FRANCE:
Excerpt:
I glanced at the clock. It was almost noon. “He’s expecting us?”
Herne nodded. “Yeah.”
Angel’s phone pinged. “Rafé’s about ten minutes behind us. He’ll meet us there.”
Suddenly, a pungent smell wafted forward from the back seat. I coughed and turned around. Raven was staring at Raj, shaking her head.
“I’m sorry. He got into the chili I made yesterday and ate about a quart. He’s been farting ever since. I’m surprised we made it through the morning without him smelling up the car.” She grinned and patted his head. “You goon.”
Raj let out a soft sound, and tilted his head. “Urmph…”
“What was that?” Angel asked.
“Gargoyles don’t talk. Not the way we do. They’re intelligent but it doesn’t translate to the way we think of intelligence. He’s empathic, to a degree, and he can understand what I say for the most part. He’s like a cat in that they meow mainly to humans. The more you talk to cats, the more they tend to talk back to you to let you know what they want. Raj mostly makes noise when I talk to him.”
Raj was about the size of a large rottweiler. He looked a lot like a dog, in some ways, except his front legs were actually arms, though he walked on his knuckles instead of walking on two feet. With leathery gray skin, he was all muscle, and while most gargoyles had wings, Raj had suffered their loss at the hands of the demon who first owned him. Raven won him away from the demon in a poker game and had used a spell to make him forget the pain he had suffered with the demon, and with that, he seemed to have forgotten he had ever had them.
This scene made me laugh because of the “normalcy” in story that isn’t the usual garden variety in most circles and is the kind I usually read. I love that your books always hold elements that are every day things. When I was reading this book a few days ago and laughed at this scene, my mother-in-law, Edith looked up and wanted to know what was so funny. When I read it aloud to her, she doesn’t read much other than old fashioned westerns like Louis Lamore and mysteries like Agatha Christie, she laughed too and asked what I was reading. She said she was glad that while I read weird stuff the books had scenes that were normal, every day things. I told her sometimes a mystery is just a mystery, the backstories may be different but a mystery brings it all together. She agreed. I don’t think she’ll read the Wild Hunt series but I think she enjoys that I love it and get a kick out of scenes like this. To me, that’s a big compliment coming from her.