Title: Hex Work by TA Moore
Publisher: Rogue Firebird Press
Release: 23 November
Blurb:
My name is Jonah Carrow, and it’s been 300 days since I laid a hex.
OK, Jonah Carrow isn’t actually an alcoholic. But there’s no support group of lapsed hex-slingers in Jerusalem, so he’s got to make do. He goes for the bad coffee and the reminder that he just has to take normal one day at a time.
Unfortunately, his past isn’t willing to go down without a fight.
A chance encounter with a desperate woman, and a warning that ‘they’re watching’, pulls Jonah back into the world he’d tried to leave behind. Now he has to navigate ghosts, curses, and the hottest bad idea warlock he’s ever met…all without a single hex to his name.
But nobody ever said normal was easy. Not to Jonah anyhow.
Hi! Can you believe it’s November already? I feel entirely adrift in the calendar these days. It’s 1934th of Morch! One thing I have managed to keep on track for, more or less, is the whole publication schedule for Hex Work…more or less!
Hex Work is NOT the book I was meant to be writing, but it’s the one that wanted to come out of my head. So I hope people like it in order to make the absolute shambles it made of my writing schedule worth it. I like it, so I guess that’s a good start!
Thanks for having me and I hope you enjoy the exclusive short story prequel to the Hex Work novella!
Read the rest of the story at TAMooreWrites.com
Stories of Babylon – Chapter Four
“Red string, red string, birth and death string,” Jonah said. He pulled a length of the string off, snapped it between his teeth, and flicked it out like a whip. “Red string chase you, away away away.”
The end of the thread tapped John’s cheek. The crust of chalk powder shattered and fell away as the string flared with bright, blue-sharp fire that flashed back down to sting Jonah’s fingers. For a second John sat–dead and bloody–on the seat. He looked at Jonah with desperate eyes and opened his mouth to say something–to ask something maybe–but he’d left it too late.
He faded away and was gone. Lot whined briefly in disappointment at losing his scratches, but then scrambled up into the front seat to stick his head out of the cracked window. His tail thumped against Jonah’s arm, hard as a whip.
Jonah shifted to the side and sucked his singed fingers as he drove. No-one lived on Zoba Road. There was a slaughter house halfway down the road, all high fences and muddy lots. Animals didn’t leave ghosts, not usually, but something big, slow, and sour with blood prowled the barns and squeezed between the livestock vans. It stank of glue and death, and it wasn’t friendly.
A few people had tried to build near here, the ugly practicality of industrial slaughter warded off by high fences and thick hedges. They always left, daunted by grassy, awful dreams and a stink that no amount of febreze could get off their clothes.
The thing in the slaughterhouse followed the Plymouth along the road, a darker shape against the darkness. Most of the dead were cold, but it steamed with bloody, animal heat that made Jonah sweat and itch.
He ignored it. Carrows dealt with the human dead, that was enough to have on their plate
It stopped at the property line, just behind the fence, and watched Jonah roll into the dark. About half a mile on, nearly at the end of the road, Jonah saw a flicker of light in a field. He pulled in to the side of the road, the Plymouth tilted up as the tires mounted the verge, and checked the time.
Nearly midnight.
Not a good time to fight a ghost, but it wasn’t a good time to fight a Carrow either. Jonah grinned briefly to himself as he turned the engine off. He supposed that made the odds even.
Wife stuck her head between the seats and breathed on him, hot and dog-food meaty.
“You wait till you’re needed,” Jonah said.
He leaned over–gave Lot a quick scratch under the chin on the way by–and popped the glove box open. It was stuffed with the detritus of however long it had been since he last cleared it out. A jar of wormwood and nails, nails that had spilled out of the jar and he’d not cleaned up yet, and monopoly money that had been soaked in a tincture of black cohosh. He pushed them out of the way and grabbed the knife that had, as always, worked its way to the bottom.
It had been his Grandfather’s once. The old man had kept the flick knife tucked in his boot and sharpened it–patient and mindless–every Friday night while he drank whiskey and brooded. Jonah slid it into his pocket and didn’t bother to lock the car behind him as he headed to the gate.
A heavy chain was looped through the metal bars. It was new. The metal was smooth under Jonah’s touch, not rusted or stiff. He’d used enough magic tonight that he could feel it in his bones, eager to age the metal brittle or slip the pins of the padlock. That was the trick you had to watch for with magic, the urge to use more and more of it.
Gran had always said that the end of that road was at a gingerbread cottage deep in the woods, spackling up holes with buttercream.
Jonah climbed over the gate instead. The ground was dry and uneven, lined with stubble from the harvest. He didn’t bother to be quiet as he headed toward the old, patched up Airstream he could see in the moonlight.
TA Moore is a Northern Irish writer of romantic suspense, urban fantasy, and contemporary romance novels. A childhood in a rural, seaside town fostered in her a suspicious nature, a love of mystery, and a streak of black humour a mile wide. As her grandmother always said, ‘she’d laugh at a bad thing that one’, mind you, that was the pot calling the kettle black. TA Moore studied History, Irish mythology, English at University, mostly because she has always loved a good story. She has worked as a journalist, a finance manager, and in the arts sectors before she finally gave in to a lifelong desire to write.
Coffee, Doc Marten boots, and good friends are the essential things in life. Spiders, mayo, and heels are to be avoided.
Website: www.tamoorewrites.com
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/TAMoorewrites/
Twitter: @tamoorewrites
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