For those of you who don’t know, I’ve been doing a series of free short sto­ries to go along with my Ele­men­tal Assas­sin urban fan­tasy books. I love play­ing in my own lit­tle sand­box, so to speak, and I thought the sto­ries were some­thing fun that I could do for read­ers — for free.

Any­way, here is the info on the two sto­ries that I’ve posted to go along with Venom:

Poi­son: This short story takes place when Gin is a teenager and is told from the point of view of Finnegan Lane, Gin’s fos­ter brother. After a party one night, Finn finds him­self in a sticky sit­u­a­tion. Click here to read it.

Wasted: This short story takes place in between the events of Web of Lies and Venom. One day, a beau­ti­ful woman walks into the bank where Finn works, and trou­ble soon fol­lows. Click here to read it.

You guys wanted more Finn, and you’re get­ting him with these stories.

Also, please note that Wasted takes place before Venom. Since I didn’t want to give away or spoil a par­tic­u­lar plot point in Venom, I don’t exactly explain what some­one needs Finn’s help with in the short story. But once you read Venom, you’ll under­stand what I was try­ing to get at. At least, I hope you do.

Also, I’ve gone ahead and posted the first chap­ter for Tan­gled Threads. Yeah, I know it’s kind of early to post it, since Venom hasn’t even come out yet, but I had some free time, so I went ahead and posted it And for those of you who get Venom, the first chap­ter of Tan­gled Threads will be in the back of the book anyway.

There are a few mild spoil­ers in the chap­ter for stuff that takes place in Venom, but really, I don’t think it’s any­thing that you guys couldn’t see com­ing. So read now if you want, or wait until after you’re read Venom. Click here to read it.

Any­way, I hope you guys have as much fun read­ing these as I did writ­ing them. Happy read­ing!

Fin­ished Bad Luck and Trou­ble by Lee Child. This is one of his books about ex-military police­man Jack Reacher.

In this one, Reacher is bum­ming around Ore­gon when he gets a mes­sage that one of his old Army bud­dies is in trou­ble. He goes to Los Ange­les, where he learns that some­one threw his buddy out of a heli­copter — and that sev­eral other mem­bers of his old Army unit are miss­ing. So Reacher teams up with Frances Nea­gley, another one of his for­mer offi­cers, and they start dig­ging into what hap­pened. Along the way, they join forces with two more mem­bers of their unit and uncover a con­spir­acy to sell weapons to the high­est bidder …

I really like the Reacher series — they’re just fun, action-packed reads. This one is no excep­tion. I loved the inter­ac­tion between Reacher and the mem­bers of his old unit in this one, as well as Reacher ques­tion­ing whether he’s really happy bum­ming around the coun­try with only his tooth­brush and his pass­port in his pocket. This is def­i­nitely one of the more real­is­tic, sym­pa­thetic por­tray­als of Reacher in the series.

In fact, I thought this was going to be one of the best books in the series — until I got to the end. Then, it all spun out of con­trol for me because Reacher does some­thing that just seemed com­pletely out of char­ac­ter for me — he waits to take out the bad guys and save his friends. I won’t spoil the end­ing here, except to say that I can see that Child was going for poetic jus­tice with it — it’s very eye-for-an-eye. But I just couldn’t help but think that some­one as smart as Reacher would take out his ene­mies as soon as pos­si­ble, rather than set them up in an elab­o­rate trap — and make his friends suf­fer while he car­ried out his plan.

But over­all, this is still an enter­tain­ing read. If you like thrillers, you have to check out this series. Thumbs up.

Up next: Some­thing About You by Julie James.

Books in my TBR pile: About 20.

What about you guys? Any­one plan­ning to read some­thing good this week­end? Share in the comments.

Fin­ished Dark­fever by Karen Marie Mon­ing. This is the first book in her pop­u­lar Fever urban fan­tasy series.

MacK­ayla Lane thinks her life is pretty good — until her sis­ter is mur­dered in Ire­land. Deter­mined to find the killer, Mac trav­els to Ire­land where she learns a star­tling secret — she’s a sidhe-seer, or a per­son who can see the Fae in their true forms, the good, the bad, and the mon­strously ugly. Mac finds a men­tor of sorts in Jeri­cho Bar­rons, who is search­ing for a book that con­tains evil, evil magic. Since her sis­ter was also search­ing for the book, Mac decides to help Jeri­cho find it, hop­ing that she’ll dis­cover her sister’s killer along the way. But it looks like the Fae might get Mac first …

Mac is an inter­est­ing char­ac­ter. She’s young — some­thing like 22 or 23 — and she acts like it, plung­ing feet first into what­ever adven­ture comes her way with­out really think­ing of the con­se­quences. Mac knows enough to be scared of the new world that she’s been thrust into, but she’s not one to back down from a fight either. And you really feel her grief over her sister’s mur­der and her con­fu­sion over these pow­ers that she never knew she had. Over­all, I really liked Mac.

But I had some prob­lems with the rest of the book. All through the story, Mac gives these lit­tle asides to the reader, like she’s look­ing back on this time in her life. I would come to learn later that … and other things like that. It was a weird kind of tense to read in places.

Also, I have to say that I didn’t care for some of the world build­ing in this one. In Moning’s world, there are some Fae who are so beau­ti­ful that humans imme­di­ately want to have sex with them — to the point of tak­ing off their clothes in broad day­light, like Mac does on two occa­sions. I thought that was extremely icky. Plus, at one point, another sidhe-seer stands by and almost lets Mac be raped by one of the Fae. Not cool. I just don’t like magic/world build­ing where peo­ple feel com­pelled to have sex, whether they really want to or not.

Also, be warned that this book ends on a cliffhanger. From what I’ve read on other book blogs, this is meant to be a five-part series, and all of the books end on a cliffhanger.

As much as I liked Mac’s brav­ery and her deter­mi­na­tion to find her sister’s killer, I dis­liked the world build­ing just as much. So thumbs down.

Up next: Bad Luck and Trou­ble by Lee Child.

Books in my TBR pile: About 20.

Look what my edi­tor sent me — the pre­lim­i­nary cover art for Tan­gled Threads, the fourth Ele­men­tal Assas­sin book. So pretty! So shiny!

Seri­ously, I think this is another kick-ass cover. There are so many lit­tle details that I love about it — the use of the spi­der rune in the title, the rune show­ing on Gin’s hand again, how tough and cool bad-ass she looks. And the back­ground is just per­fect, since a lot of the action in the book takes place at a train yard.

For those of you who missed it, here’s the back cover copy for Tan­gled Threads:

I’d rather face a dozen lethal assas­sins any night than deal with some­thing as tricky, con­vo­luted, and frag­ile as my feel­ings. But here I am. Gin Blanco, the semi-retired assas­sin known as the Spi­der. Hov­er­ing out­side sexy busi­ness­man Owen Grayson’s front door like a ner­vous teenage girl. One thing I like about Owen: he doesn’t shy away from my past—or my present. And right now I have a bull’s-eye on my fore­head. Cold-blooded Fire ele­men­tal Mab Mon­roe has hired one of the smartest assas­sins in the busi­ness to trap me. Elek­tra LaFleur is skilled and effi­cient, with deadly elec­tri­cal ele­men­tal magic as potent as my own Ice and Stone pow­ers. Which means there’s a fifty-fifty chance one of us won’t sur­vive this bat­tle. I intend to kill LaFleur—or die trying—because Mab wants the assas­sin to take out my baby sis­ter, Detec­tive Bria Coolidge, too. The only prob­lem is, Bria has no idea I’m her long-lost sib­ling … or that I’m the mur­derer she’s been chas­ing through Ash­land for weeks. And what Bria doesn’t know just might get us both dead …

In other news, Scott on my Face­book fan page alerted me to the fact that Tan­gled Threads is now up for pre-order at Ama­zon. So go forth and buy, if you wish. It looks like the book will be out in May 2011 (April 26 to be exact), unless some­thing dras­tic changes. I’m pretty sure that book #5 will be out on Octo­ber 2011, but I’m still wait­ing on con­fir­ma­tion on that one too.

Any­way, I’m doing the happy dance about how cool the cover is. I hope you guys like it too!

So I did a book sign­ing this week­end at Rob-Con, a comic book con­ven­tion that’s held every July in Bris­tol, Va. The event is spon­sored by Moun­tain Empire Comics, and I want to give a shout-out to Rob, the owner, for hav­ing me back at the con again. Thanks, Rob!

Yep, that’s me on the right, telling some­one all about the Ele­men­tal Assas­sin urban fan­tasy series. Many thanks go out to Whee­z­ley, my sig­nif­i­cant other, for snap­ping the photo.

A cou­ple of weeks ago, I did some posts on book pro­mo­tion, and one of the things that I men­tioned was that I don’t do any book sign­ings at chain book­stores any more. Why not? Well, I just never seem to have any inter­est or sell more than a book or two.

But going to Rob-Con is totally dif­fer­ent. There, folks know all about super­heroes and fan­tasy books, movies, and TV shows. So even if I don’t sell any books, I can still have a good time talk­ing to peo­ple. I much pre­fer doing events like Rob-Con or group book sign­ings rather than sit­ting by myself in a chain store for two hours. And yes, peo­ple will think that you work at the store and ask you where the bath­room is when you do those kind of sign­ings. Sigh.

So how did I do at Rob-Con? Well, I sold seven books, and sev­eral more peo­ple came over and got me to sign copies of the books that they already had. Any time I can sell more than five books in two hours, I feel like I’ve done okay. And of course, I handed out some book­marks and fly­ers to every­one who stopped by my table. Over­all, it was a fun way to spend a Sat­ur­day after­noon.

For those of you who might be inter­ested, I’ll prob­a­bly be doing a sign­ing for Venom at Moun­tain Empire Comics some­time in late Octo­ber, when the store has its big Hal­loween sale/party. I’ll post the details when I get them.