We Need a Little Christmas!

 

My favorite part of the holiday season is to put together a bunch of shoeboxes for Operation Christmas Child. We fill them with school supplies, toys, hygiene items, useful things, fun things, and send them through Samaritan's Purse to children in foreign countries, to assist in the day-to-day demonstration of Jesus' love.

Let me give YOU a gift this year:

FIRST: Go to SamaritansPurse.org and put together a shoebox or two online, or pay for the shipping on the boxes you've put together, OR check out their online gift catalog and donate toward one of the many items to help families and villages in need around the world.

THEN: Email me an electronic copy of your receipt, to: 2OldeDragons@gmail.com

BUT BEFORE THAT: Check out the storefront at YeOldeDragonBooks.com or my website, MLevigne.com, for the book blurbs, and pick out the ebook(s) or audiobook(s) you'd like to have, my thank-you for helping Samaritan's Purse spread God's love this holiday season. Give me the title of the item(s) when you send me your receipt. Here's what you can get:

Up to $20 spent: Any ebook

Up to $40 spent: 2 ebooks or 1 audiobook

Up to $60 spent: 3 ebooks or 2 audiobooks

Up to $80 spent: 4 ebooks or 3 audiobooks (or 2 ebooks and 2 audiobooks)

Over $80 spent: A print copy of the Neighborlee fantasy novel, Allergic to Mistletoe. Or all the ebooks.

TITLES: Christmas in Ohio -- Crystal Christmas -- Tabor at Christmas -- Allergic to Mistletoe -- Christmas Fiction Off the Beaten Path

Have you checked out THAKAI, recently?

 

THAKAI is my current work-in-progress up on Royal Road.

I try to upload 2 episodes, around 2,500 words each, every week.

Here's the link to the page. Please come read! 

 https://www.royalroad.com/fiction/118523/thakai

Essentially, my hero, Dysander, is an Odysseus-type character. That means there's an equivalent of Helen in this world, a version of Sparta, a version of Troy, a version of Ithaka (Thakai, for those who aren't good with anagrams ...) and Penelope -- and a war, and a long journey home.

Right now, I'm nearing the end of what will be Book 1 when the series begins to be published. The tentative title is DYSANDER AND THE SEA GOD. In this book, so far, Dysander has a friend named Aithon who is actually the sea god, Ancuenor, incognito. They have a huge, dangerous adventure that I just finished writing, and Dysander learns the truth. He's kind of peeved. In turn, Ancuenor is furious with Dysander because of something he did that the sea god considers treachery, and the two don't part as friends. Then in the next book, as THAKAI continues, the sea god interferes when Dysander finds the girl he wants to marry, and when he doesn't get his revenge, puts a curse on Dysander, forbidding him to ever leave his island home.

At least, that's the plan. There's a workaround, of course, because how could there be a Trojan War and a Trojan Horse without that world's version of Odysseus to come up with the solution?

Please visit THAKAI and read, leave comments, make suggestions -- maybe get your name in the acknowledgements, for coming up with something truly brilliant that changes the trajectory of the whole story!

Excerpt: ALLERGIC TO MISTLETOE, Neighborlee, Ohio, Book 10

 "So, what do you think?" Megan said as she stepped into the lounging part of her and Alexi's dressing room backstage.

Alexi and Harry had gone to get their car and bring it to the backstage entrance, for a quick getaway. Megan had confided in Bethany that she thought Harry was cute, so excited about riding in a real, Human-made car.

"I like him. How does his wife feel about him spending the holidays with me and my Dad?" Bethany said.

"No wife." Megan shrugged and slipped into her clogs before sitting down on the other end of the couch. "Which is a total injustice. Alexi says the girls can't see past his science experiments and his research, to the really great guy under the brainy persona."

"What kind of science experiments?" Bethany imagined Harry doing a Nutty Professor routine, his lab coat smeared with stains, maybe scorched in places. It fit. How long since she had let herself feel anything but mild social friendship with a man?

Maybe the fact that he didn't ask for her autograph, didn't ogle her figure, had a lot to do with the attraction. Because yes, she admitted to a strong attraction between them, from the moment that zap of static electricity sent a lovely, hot shiver down her back.

It was great to realize she was a normal woman after all, not a frightened, frigid little teasing twit, as that last studio-arranged date accused her of being.

This was going to be a great Christmas.

A knock on the door, then it opened and her heart did a funny little skip when she saw Harry, and the way his gaze zeroed in on her all the way across the room.

"Ready?" He stepped into the room and held out a hand. "This might tingle a little."

"Kind of like a force field or tractor beam or something wrapping around a ship?" she offered.

Harry's eyes widened and his mouth dropped open a little, and that funny feeling in her stomach turned squirmy. Had she turned him off already?

Then he grinned. That lovely zing climbed her arm when their hands touched. A buzzing sensation raced across her bare skin. It tickled and massaged somewhere between her skin and her bones.

"Wow." She flinched when her voice sounded a little off, not quite hollow.

Excerpt: ALLERGIC TO MISTLETOE, Neighborlee, Ohio, Book 10

 "Umm... What exactly did they tell you about me?"

"Oh, I figured out the whole not-quite-Human thing a while ago. I just never confronted them with it." Bethany blushed and looked at her hands clasped on the table in front of her.

Something dropped inside his chest and warmth stole over him. He wanted to protect her. He wanted to take the paparazzi and the other bozos stealing her privacy, and send them to the Dungeon Dimensions for a couple hundred years. Nobody he knew blushed. The simple little reaction made her seem small and delicate and vulnerable.

Which she was anything but. He had seen her first movie, the tough chick who turned her world upside down to save it, who devised bombs and weapons from nothing to protect innocents. Even with that blush fading from her cheeks, he sensed a lot of similarities between the Bethany sitting before him now and the girl on the screen. It made no sense, but Harry didn't care.

"So, say something." Her smile went crooked.

"You're pretty calm about it. A lot of people would probably be freaking out, faced with the fact of a lot of other dimensions of reality, side-by-side with the one they know. I've always wondered what the CIA and FBI and all those foreign intelligence agencies and governments would do, if they knew about the Fae realms. If they'd maybe try to bomb us out of existence, or prosecute us as illegal aliens or whatever."

"So, who was here first? Fae or Humans?"

Harry sat for five seconds with his mouth hanging open, stumped by that question. That was definitely something for the Ether Lexicon. For all he knew, that was part of the no-need-to-know information the Lexicon sometimes stubbornly refused to divulge. Then he laughed. Bethany blushed again, but she grinned.

How come girls like her don't exist in the Enclaves?

Excerpt: ALLERGIC TO MISTLETOE, Neighborlee, Ohio, Book 10

 "Bethany?" he murmured when he reached her table. Harry admired her self-control, so she didn't even flinch or look his way, betraying her disguise. He held up the half of Alexi's business card that served as his identification.

Bethany peered from under her floppy hat and slid her half of the card across the table toward him. She didn't take her fingertips off the card until he matched up his half to hers.

"Harry Morton," he said, and held out his hand. Bethany's slim, strong little hand slid into his. Something sparked, almost a buzz, between their fingers.

"Static electricity." She offered a crooked little smile and a whisper of laughter as she jerked her hand away.

"Uh. Yeah." Harry slid into the booth facing her while he gathered his thoughts. She had felt that? She had soaked up more magic than he had first guessed.

Fascinating.

"I think Alexi insisted on all this cloak and dagger just for the fun of it," she said, as the audience applauded the first illusion of the evening. She grinned, which made an inexplicable world of difference for Harry. If she had scowled or showed reluctance in any way, he didn't know what he would have thought of her.

"Yep, that's my favorite cousin."

"You look like him." Bethany offered an awkward little smile.

"You think so?" He glanced at Alexi, who stepped back and held up the silk purse on a pole, so Megan could demonstrate there was nothing in it. Real magic made things so much easier for magicians, Harry mused, but Alexi and Megan insisted on practicing sleight of hand, doing it the way full Humans did. He supposed it was all in the challenge. 

"He has more glitz, but there's a strong resemblance. Of course, combing your hair back like that and dressing so casual, that makes people kind of pass over you. So, you're really good at this invisibility thing?"

Read Penelope's Story NOW

 

Have you seen EPIC: The Musical, on YouTube yet? (It's The Odyssey, set to music, by the way. Love it!)

Have you wondered about Penelope's side of the story? Just why did she wait through 10 years of war and then 10 years of wandering and imprisonment, for Odysseus to come home?

Now you can read Penelope's side of the story!

Back in print after 10 years, PENELOPE OF ITHAKA is available exclusively on Amazon right now.

The official release date is November 1, BUT you can get the paperback NOW and save $3 off the official cover price.
Or you can pre-order the ebook.
Or you can wait until November 1 and read it in Kindle Unlimited.

And yeah, there's an audiobook coming.
Or you can listen to individual episodes now on the Ye Olde Dragon's Library storytelling podcast.

Take your pick.

But please follow this Affiliate link and check it out!! I'm so proud to have this book baby of mine available again!

https://amzn.to/47Ahv2N

Excerpt: ALLERGIC TO MISTLETOE, Neighborlee, Ohio, Book 10

"She doesn't mind having a stranger around?"

"Funny, that's the same thing she said about you." Megan gave her top hat one more tiny adjustment.

"We're on, sweetheart." Alexi caught up with them, wrapped an arm around Megan's waist, and kissed her for luck as he did every night. A kiss that packed enough heat into a two-second liplock, Harry burst out in sweat. They stepped out onto the stage.

He gulped, locked down his counter-spell so he wouldn't fade out at an inopportune moment, and headed for the side entrance. Time to meet his assignment.

He stepped into the supper club seating area and meandered around the perimeter to the booth where Bethany waited. On stage, Alexi kept up the patter while Megan searched the audience for the first volunteer assistant. All the women watched Alexi, all the men watched Megan. Harry felt slightly nauseous from the rising pheromones. Didn't these Humans have any self-control? Especially when it came to two entertainers who made it very clear they were married to each other?

He didn't see anything wrong with window-shopping, as it were, and appreciating what was on display. But Harry drew the line at plotting how to break the glass and steal what was inside.