Authors: Laura VanArendonk Baugh
Con Job (21 page)
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Con Job
? Please leave a review! It’s one of the best things you can do for a book, and I do read every one. Thank you!
Laura VanArendonk Baugh is a behavior expert, animal trainer, and chocolate enthusiast who has attended and worked at quite a lot of anime, sci-fi, comic, gaming, and other conventions. She’s won about thirty costume awards at cons ranging in size from a few hundred to over fifty thousand attendees, judged costume contests, and presented well over one hundred workshops on costuming, fandom, and related topics — so she enjoyed this chance to get her geek on in fiction as well.
www.AndSewingIsHalfTheBattle.com
Laura’s other titles include:
Kitsune-Tsuki
Kitsune-Mochi
Smoke and Fears
Smoke and Peers
Fired Up, Frantic, and Freaked Out:
Training Crazy Dogs from Over-the-Top to Under Control
and a variety of short stories
“Tell us how you escaped from Devil’s Island, Randolph.”
“Oh, Doug, I'm far too busy to be upset. I have my broadcasts, my fan mail, my detailed plans for how to dispose of Jeff's body….”
These lines from Sam’s voice audition are borrowed from
Remember WENN
, a brilliant show which, like
Firefly
, was canceled by management despite its popularity but unlike
Firefly
, never got a DVD release. (Read more on the greatest television series you’ve never seen at
http://lauravanarendonkbaugh.com/remember-wenn/
)
The lines were spoken by the inimitable Miss Hilary Booth (played by Melinda Mullins), an actress complaining of poorly-written scripts who finally bursts, “I’ve even had to say, ‘Tell us how you escaped from Devil’s Island, Randolph!’” More than fifteen years later, as I was trying to write a flat and terrible line, Hilary’s diatribe ran through my mind, and as I knew any pathetic line I tried to write after that would be a pale copy of that perfectly limp phrase, I decided to honor her lost show with that line and the next. Original writing credit goes to show’s creator and writer Rupert Holmes. I’d love to give you a link to purchase the DVDs, but….
WENN
fans may recognize another audition reference as well, but it’s more oblique to keep things spoiler-free.
Do you like anime, manga, or Japanese culture? You might enjoy the
Kitsune Tales
, a series of stories set in Japanese folklore.
Kitsune-Tsuki
—
The
onmyouji
Tsurugu no Kiyomori, a practitioner of the mystic arts, has been engaged to protect the warlord's new bride from the fox spirit rumored to be near. Tsurugu and the shadow-warrior Shishio Hitoshi face an impossible challenge in teasing out a
kitsune
shapeshifter from the
samurai
and servants –- if such a creature is even present at all.
The handsome mute twin servants belonging to Lady Kaede are certainly suspicious, but it is the beautiful and strong-willed lady herself who draws Shishio’s mistrust. Tsurugu and Shishio must move carefully, for accusing the warlord’s bride falsely would be death. But failing to identify the kitsune to the warlord is equally perilous, and there is more to discover.
For an
onmyouji
knows secrets even the shadows do not….
Kitsune-Mochi
— Onmyouji
Tsurugu no Kiyomori serves Naka no Yoritomo and his new wife Kaede, protecting their household from the supernatural and warning of more mundane threats. When a murder is committed in Naka's name, an exiled
onmyouji
determines to wreak his own justice by destroying Naka no Yoritomo and his bride, just as word comes that an immensely powerful
youkai
is moving, coming to Kaede.
Now Tsurugu and his allies must protect his
daimyou‘s house from a dangerous rival without revealing their own treacherous secrets — or they die by the hands of their friends instead of their enemies.
The Lonely Frost
— Strange occurrences bring Tsurugu no Kiyomori to a remote village, to determine whether the disappearances of goods and people are the work of human thieves or supernatural
youkai. But even an experienced
onmyouji
like Tsurugu is not prepared for what he will find.
Coming soon in the anthologies
Specter Spectacular II: 13 Deathly Tales
and
Weird
and
Wondrous Work: Speculative Fiction Presents the Oddest of Odd Jobs
from
World Weaver Press
.