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Good Morning, Readers! Today I am going on tour to share the new release of a new urban fantasy series by Lynne Murray! Enjoy and don’t forget to enter the giveaway!

 

 

 

 

Angie Faust Series Book 1
by Lynne Murray
Genre: Urban Fantasy

The day she killed her boss...

 

Everything changed.

 

She never laid a hand on him to take his life. She didn’t have to.

As her boss lies on the floor with a dozen witnesses staring and paramedics working in a futile effort to save him, a mysterious stranger approaches Angie with a bizarre offer.

 

It’s a job with the ExtraTerrestrial Protection Agency, a secret organization. Can Angie trust a group whose very existence is ultra classified?

 

She has to decide in a hurry because her newly released power starts drawing attention from life-draining, telepathic, Mindworms and alien scientists obsessed with abducting humans. Most terrifying of all, she’s stalked by one of the most fearsome predators in the galaxy.

 

 

If you loved Men in Black or Ilona Andrews’ Innkeeper Chronicles series, buckle up for a wild ride with Angie Faust in Cursing. Get it now!

 

 

Goodreads – https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/45165631-cursing

 

BookBub - https://www.bookbub.com/books/cursing-book-1-of-the-angie-faust-series-by-lynne-murray

 

Riffle - https://www.rifflebooks.com/books/1049142

 

 

 

Cursing is the 1st book in the Angie Faust series

 

 

 

AVAILABLE in ebook

 

Amazon – https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07QQ42HZB

 

 

Chapter 1

 

Things changed the day I killed my boss. I was trying so hard not to.

He died quickly from cardiac arrest in front of a dozen witnesses in the glassed-in fishbowl of a conference room at Wolfe, Savage and Steele, the law firm where we worked. I never touched him physically. I didn’t have to. His name was Carroll Caine.

 

The Office Manager’s death interrupted an extended yelling session aimed at me. Caine was a short, square-built man with small bulging, blue eyes, a permanently red face and silver hair, cut brush short. For some reason, he had singled me out for verbal abuse almost from his first day on the job. He retired from the Navy as a Warrant Officer. Law firms like to hire former non-coms on the theory that they work well with a formal chain of command. But for Caine, taking orders from civilian lawyers he didn’t respect chafed him like a sandpaper jockstrap.

He took it out on his subordinates. I was a favorite target.

 

Understanding why Caine attacked me so often didn’t protect me when he did.

My other co-workers looked away in embarrassment or relief that, at least for the moment, Caine wasn’t singling them out. Not Francine, the woman sitting next to me in the conference room. She was petite, blonde and eager to score points with Caine by digging up the slightest hint of an error on my part.

 

Caine picked a bad day to stand over me and settle in for an extended rant. My Aunt Bess had simply disappeared six months earlier and without her, I had no one. The pain of her loss had retreated to a dull ache most days, but sometimes it flared up into a sharp pain of grief and confusion.

 

I focused all my attention on breathing slowly and letting his word roll over me.

I huddled in my chair, trying to make myself invisible, staring down at the pad of paper in front of me, a pencil gripped in my hand.

 

Caine paused for breath as if savoring looking down at me. He leaned in close. “You’d already be out of here if I didn’t suspect you might have a hidden disability and you’d sue all our asses. Is that it, Angie?”

 

“Look at me!”

 

I slowly looked up and met his eyes. Bad idea. The urge to let loose the anger that built in every cell of my body. I blinked when a cloud of black dots like a swarm of tiny insects filled my vision, swirling between Caine and Francine. I glanced around. Most people stared at the table or Caine. No one else gave any sign of seeing the whirling dots.

 

Great Angie, you’re hallucinating, just what I need.

 

“Keeping something up your sleeve, Angie? Maybe you lied on your employment application?” His spit landed on my face. Droplets hit my glasses. I wanted to wipe them off, but I didn’t move a muscle.

 

I could smell Caine’s rage under the Bay Rum aftershave and lingering cigar smoke on his breath.

 

Something inside me settled. Everything seemed sharper, clearer and despite the black cloud of dots passing between Francine and Caine. It couldn’t be real. A voice somewhere in the mists of early life echoed in my head.

 

Stop the heart.

 

Deadly calm washed over me. I felt myself starting to shake as if there was an earthquake. There was not. Yet an inner vibration shook me physically like the roars I heard when my aunt took me to the Lion House at the San Francisco Zoo at feeding time.

 

I focused on Caine. Not on his face, on his chest. Every sound in the room fell away. I found his heart. I raised my hand to point at him, still holding the pencil.

He straightened up. A slow smile on his face told me he was hoping he had made me mad enough to do something stupid. He had.

 

“Ya gonna hit me, Angie?” he asked.

 

“No.” I couldn’t remember ever feeling so calm.

 

Now.

 

I snapped my arm a few inches back as if I meant to throw the pencil at him. Caine instinctively rocked back on his heels, but there was no escape for him. Energy tore through me. My fingers tingled as I completed the short gesture toward his chest. I sensed the familiar but unknown force piercing him like a tool. It reached for his heart and grabbed it. And squeezed.

 

The pencil broke in half. The eraser end bounced off the table and fell on the rug. I lowered my arm, feeling his heart, frozen in a spasm as if my hand really was squeezing it. The inner shaking stopped and I took a deep breath, suddenly, oddly at peace.

 

Caine’s knees gave way and he crumpled to the floor. He twitched a few times. I don’t know how, but I could feel his life leave his body. He wasn’t coming back.

I stood up and backed away as two co-workers rushed past me to attempt CPR. They knelt beside him, but I knew they wouldn’t be able to revive him. I jammed my hands into my pockets and finally let go of the top half of the pencil. I kept my head down because I couldn’t help myself from smiling. The roaring inside me was gone. The swarm of black particles was gone too.

 

I took my hands out of my pockets and saw a couple of wood slivers had pierced my skin. I was bleeding. It didn’t even hurt. I didn’t feel anything but relief at the sudden quiet when Caine shut up.

 

Then the fear hit.

 

Everything I learned growing up told me I should go home, grab my getaway pack and leave town. It would be hard to run without my aunt organizing our escape.

 

I didn’t want to move again. I loved San Francisco. The rent-controlled apartment was my true refuge with my grandfather’s books lining almost every wall.

 

Maybe I wouldn’t have to run. Maybe no one noticed how Caine had died. People drew back to the edges of the room while efforts to revive him got more frantic. No one paid the slightest bit of attention to me. It wasn’t as if I’d physically touched the old man. Maybe no one would blame me.

 

Scratch that.

 

As I surreptitiously dabbed Caine’s saliva off my face and glasses with the cuff of my long-sleeved blouse, I raised my head and looked straight into the eyes of the most gorgeous man I’d ever seen. He twirled a pair of sunglasses in his hand and continued to stare right at me.

 

He had a tousled mop of sun-streaked light brown hair. He wore a tan suit about the same shade as his hair and a light blue shirt and gold and darker blue striped tie. His angelic face, even features and sensual lips seemed familiar. Maybe I’d seen him in one of those semi-porn underwear ads—the kind where you don’t look closely at the model’s face because you’re too busy checking out that impossibly lithe and muscular body. He leaned against the receptionist’s desk as if he owned it, as if he owned any place he stood simply by standing there.

 

He stowed his glasses in his jacket pocket and raised a blond eyebrow at me as if asking a question with luminous blue eyes.

 

The receptionist, a sixty-something retired airline stewardess with a British accent, had already called 911. Now she leaned over her counter at the perfect angle to check out Underwear Model Man’s ass at the same time that she watched the drama around our co-workers struggling to revive Caine.

 

Underwear Model Man held my gaze and nodded at me. I flinched in surprise. He didn’t quite smile, but his eyes crinkled as if we had a secret understanding. A deep feeling of dread settled like lead in my gut. This couldn’t be good.

 

I made it past the reception desk and nearly to the elevator when Underwear Model Man fell into step beside me. He was taller than me. I’m five ten, he must have been around six feet.

 

“Meet me for coffee after work,” he whispered, leaning close. He smelled of Irish Spring soap. “There’s someone you need to talk to. Someone you have a lot in common with. You won’t regret it.”

I kept moving without answering. Every woman in the place stared at this guy. He was that magnetic. The last thing I wanted at this particular moment was anyone paying attention to me.

 

But the stranger followed me and held the elevator door while I got in. “Seriously, you owe it to yourself to listen to an offer that would get you out of this...place.” He didn’t have to say “This hellhole,” it was implicit in his tone. I couldn’t disagree with him. The only thing I liked about Wolfe, Savage and Steele was the paycheck.

“An offer I can’t refuse, huh?” I snapped at him. “That turned out so well for the guy who found the horse’s head in his bed.”

 

The man chuckled. “No dead horses, I promise. But your skills deserve better.”

 

“You know nothing about my skills,” I kept my voice low.

 

“Don’t I?”

 

Francine and three other women slipped past Underwear Model Man into the elevator with me. They all stared at and me, then back at him again.

 

He let go of the door and it closed before I could say another word.

 

An older woman whose name I didn’t know commented on how fine that young man was. Then the elevator bell dinged for our floor and we all filed out in silence. No one mentioned Caine.

 

Underwear Model Man was leaning against the building waiting for me when I went out the front door. He’d taken off his tie and it was hard not to look at the tanned skin and a curl of golden chest hair showing where the top button of his shirt was open.

 

“Hi, I’m Chad Falconer.”

 

At least I didn’t have to keep calling him Underwear Model Man. Automatically, I responded, “Angie Faust.” I instantly regretted that. Now he knew my name.

I needed to get away fast. Men like him don’t follow women like me home from work without some agenda. Whatever his reason it didn’t involve flowers, dinner dates and happy endings. Maybe he sensed how desperately I missed my aunt. Predators can read body language and track wounded animals.

 

“Whatever it is you’re selling, I can’t afford it.”

 

He grinned as if I’d said something terribly witty. “Fair enough,” he said, falling into an easy pace beside me. Chad persisted, walking closer and tilting his head down to get my attention.

 

“Whoever you are and whatever you want, I don’t trust you,” I said.

“The only reason you should listen to me at all is that you and I seem to be the only two people who understood what was going on this morning.”

 

I stopped so fast he almost ran into me.

 

“My boss had a stroke or heart attack while he was yelling at me. He was an old man. He had a strenuous day of verbally abusing people. His heart just gave out.”

 

“It doesn’t usually happen that way though, does it?” Chad said. “I don’t know about you, but the people I want to see die usually go on to live a disgustingly healthy life of making everyone miserable and die peacefully in bed at 95.”

 

“You can’t blame me for what happened,” I concluded, my voice wavering a little.

 

He seemed to understand because he stepped away a foot or so. “Believe me, Angie, blame is the last word I would use to describe you or anything you do.” He stepped in front of me to stop for a moment but he held out his hands out with palms up. “Would you do me a favor?”

 

“Maybe. Will you let me alone if I do?”

 

“Absolutely. The only thing I ask is that you come with me to a coffee shop and meet someone who understands your great gift.”

 

“Gift?” I snorted a small burst of laughter at that thought.

 

“Seriously, it’s a public place, a café not far from here. No pressure.”

 

I stared at him. I never admitted that I was responsible for the violent things that happened around me. My aunt and I rarely spoke about it. “Where is this place?”

 

“It’s an easy walk. Come on, it will only take half an hour of your time.”

I admit I was curious and absurdly relieved that he didn’t seem to be selling anything or whipping out a chloroformed rag and forcing me into a car. But mainly I agreed because of a vain hope that there might actually be a way to cope with whatever the hell it was that I had been fighting my whole life.

 

 

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Lynne Murray was born in Illinois, but she grew up in transit due to her father's work with the military. She's lived in Texas, Alaska, Florida, Washington state, and Southern California, before landing and staying in San Francisco.

 

Lynne writes the kind of books she loves to read. Those usually feature a lot of action, quirky characters and supernatural attitude. She just might read anything that isn't tied down, but some of the books that have to be restrained also make it onto her list. Her favorite authors include Illona Andrews, Faith Hunter, Patricia Briggs, Kim Hamilton, Terry Pratchett and T.H. White.

 

She now lives and writes and stares out the window at the ocean with a group of rescue cats, who rescue her right back with heroic feats of purring.

Website: http://www.maadwomen.com/lynnemurray

Blog: http://lynnemurray.blogspot.com

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/FalstaffVampireFiles

Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/lynne.murray.7771

Twitter: https://twitter.com/lynnemurray

Pinterest: https://www.pinterest.com/lynnemurrayhaes

Bookbub: https://www.bookbub.com/authors/lynne-murray

Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/Lynne-Murray/e/B000APGEE6

Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/268380.Lynne_Murray

 

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The Cursing Stones (Avalon Rising) (Volu...

It is always risky to go for a retelling of the most famous legends - like Avalon, Arthurian legends and so on.

 

And this was not really interesting.

 

It felt off and didn't manage to really generate interest in the main characters.

This is a reblog from https://druidlife.wordpress.com/2012/08/18/community-cursing/ where I reviewed this book back in 2012

 

I’ve just read Melusine Draco’s fascinating book By Spellbook & Candle: Cursing, Hexing, Bottling & Binding. (Recommended). It’s a very interesting piece of work which includes all sorts of information about the history of cursing. The one thing that grabbed me particularly was the idea of community cursing. The general image of cursing is more of the solitary, perhaps shameful act of malevolence against another. It’s done alone, in darkness, the evidence carefully hidden so you don’t get burned as a witch. A clichéd image, I know, but I think that’s the more normal association.

 

Community cursing is a whole other thing, and this book flagged up a number of times and places when its known to have been carried out. The best know example would be the Catholic excommunication, the accompanying language for which is tantamount to cursing somebody. And what could be more damning than removing a person from the presence, and care, of god? When a community gathers to publically throw a curse at someone, this has a totally different vibe from the private cursing image. For a start, normally the one who curses would be the one to face punishment in the event of discovery. Communal cursing, especially religion sanctioned, perhaps even undertaken by your priest or some other figure of authority, keeps power with the majority. It begs the question of why you might choose a curse in that scenario rather than more conventional, physical responses to a problem person.

 

If the intended recipient of a communal curse is an outsider, perhaps they will never know. It makes sense to curse the enemies of the tribe, and sociologically speaking, I suppose that’s as much about group identity and making up for a sense of lost power as anything else. When the majority undertakes to curse the lone individual from inside the community, there have to be other reasons, and I am not sure what they are. Punishment by public humiliation? A method for controlling behaviour, akin to the rough music used in some communities to shame those who do not conform to shared standards? Is it an implicit threat that next time action will be more direct? It probably varies across places and times. In the case of Catholic excommunication and other curse exiles, it is about publically removing the person from the community. For a lot of history, being outside the fold was probably a death sentence.

 

The whole issue flags up for me how contextual most things are. If someone with power, sanctioned by religion, curses another, that’s not evil, it may even get you saint status. When the curse is the only means of revenge or justice available to someone who is largely powerless, then the discovery of it will likely lead to further disempowerment.

Of course some, if not most of the cursing evidenced by folk practice, was all about greed and malice. Much of it won’t have had any decent justification. Cursing is just another way in which humans have sought to get advantages over each other, score points, and get our own way. It’s neither pretty nor excusable. But then there are the curses of the starving beggar, turned away from the rich house in the depths of winter, empty handed and powerless. I’ve encountered a few witch trial stories that start from just such a point. The wronged one powerless to get justice by conventional means, and invoking poetic justice, the wrath of God or their own anger in a quest to balance the books. And oddly enough, as Melusine points out, when someone poor and powerless curses in this way, and the curse comes to pass, no one seems to consider that this might not be evil at all, but a bit of divine intervention on behalf of the aggrieved one.

It had never before occurred to me that curses could be such a loaded, political issue!

The 20th century witchcraft revival saw a lot of effort put into good PR - and necessarily so. As witchcraft emerged from under a shadow of mistrust to become something more socially acceptable, the idea that witches are basically good people was something we all heard a lot about.

 

We do good, kind, benevolent white magic, not nasty evil black path stuff.

 

Or as it's more often put, an it harm none, do what you will.

 

The truth of magical history is not as squeaky clean. There is plenty of evidence that people in the past - who may or may not have self identified as witches - did a lot of cursing. As writing it down is a popular method, there's some pretty clear and detailed evidence out there for curses. Whether we like them or not, they are part of the history of people doing magic, and for that reason alone we ought to be talking about them.

 

This a brave book, in that it tackles the issue of cursing head on, and pulls no punches. It looks at how, and why and when. Cursing is not as ethical simple as you might first think. When there is no justice available, seeking a bit of poetical justice by magic has, if you will excuse the turn of phrase, a certain charm. When the system is corrupt, when someone has wronged you and holds all the power, when you have no witnesses to support you, then terrible things can be got away with. There's a case to make for using curses at times such as these.

 

There's also a saying that if you don't know how to curse, you don't know how to cure. A person who will only deal with love and light and unicorns is perhaps not equipped to deal with everything they might encounter in this life. To understand how and when and why people resort to curses is to know something of the human condition that can serve you well, regardless of whether you want to be working with deliberate malevolence.

 

this is not the most comfortable book ever written - and rightly so, but if you are interested in traditional magic, it's well worth a read.

Cursing at the Sky - Anne Michaud I received a free eBook ARC version in return for an honest review. Though, for a novella (only 32 pages, according to Goodreads), I admit that it took me far too long to read; my fault. I didn't keep track of how long it took me to read the entire thing, so it could be much less time than I imagine. I think the main problem is that I just don't know what to say in this review. It's one of those stories that I just don't know how to explain what I feel about it, nor can I summarise my feelings in a succinct manner.

The story begins with Ina, a young woman who is in hospital. Her story is sad, even moreso now that her legs are gone. As we find out more about her life, we find out about the accident and the events that led up to it. For a while, her thoughts have been plagued by characters who only visit her. In fact, one of those characters visited her the night of the accident and led her to it. Through the story, Ina begins healing. Not only the wounds where her legs used to be, but she also gets committed to a new hospital to help her heal her mind.

I don't always like novella/ serials/ short stories (whatever you want to define this book as), mostly because not all authors know how to plan and present things in a small page count. That being said, not all authors are great are doing it in a long page count either. However, I digress. I think that the author, Anne Michaud, has presented the story reasonably well. The story is told in Ina's point of view and I feel like the plot of the story basically follows her thoughts on the matter, how she feels about each event happening to her and what she's done. Though this type of story telling method doesn't always work for those who try it, I think it works reasonably well here because of Ina's fractured mental state. Being that she's the one telling the story, she looks back on things, doesn't censor her thoughts and we get a lot of personal opinion as well. Going on with that point, I think the characters work well in the way the story is told. You can feel that many of the characters mean well and are genuinely trying to help Ina, even if she doesn't want them to help. Though, at the same time, I can see that not all of them really understand Ina's feelings or reasons either. It's kind of heartbreaking to read about Ina's pain and her guilt on the pain she has caused to other people. At the same time, it's also saddening because I can see that she doesn't intend to upset or annoy other people.

I somewhat enjoyed this story. I think that it has an interesting premise and I have not read anything quite like this before. While it is somewhat based in reality, with Ina's visions explained by mental illness, I like the way that the author has sort of also left it open as a somewhat paranormal novel and it could also be thought of as if ghosts and ghouls really are visiting her. The characters are interesting and I feel like Ina and many of the background characters' actions or feelings are understandable. Overall, it's a great piece. It's haunting, dark and thought-provoking. I rate it four and half stars, marked up to five for originality.