J. A. Pitts

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Excerpt

It's not that the apartment was empty. There was just nothing mundane there. The walls had shiny white spaces where Katie's pictures had once hung. The floors were completely bare, cabinets were devoid of contents and even doors. But more than that, everything glowed like phosphorescent white porcelain. It was creepy. Starting just inside the doorway crystal formations covered every flat surface, oozing out of the gaping cabinets, pooling into stalagmites all around the kitchen and along the bar. Great webs of crystals covered the windows and hung down from the corners of the room.

"This is new, I take it?" Qindra asked as she stepped toward the door.

"Wait!" I shouted, reaching for her, my hand landing on her shoulder at the same time her foot crossed the threshold, breaking the plane between outside and in. A wave of dizziness washed over us both. Qindra stumbled, breaking my contact, but pulling me into the room. I recognized this stomach churning sensation. I'd felt it the last time I'd been sucked into the sideways. Of course, then I was astral, out-of-body. This was lighter, somehow but just as disorienting.

"That's strange," Qindra said, turning toward me, her wand in front of her face.

That's when the feeder dropped from the ceiling, knocking her to the floor.

It looked like a giant spider, with thick glassine spines and a myriad of glowing eyes. I lunged forward and caught the huge creepy a crunching crescent kick to its body. Glass shards scattered across the floor as the nasty thing flew off of Qindra and shattered two crystalline formations near the bar before slamming into the wall. He was big sucker, but didn't have much mass. I slid the sheath across my body, pulling Gram free with one practiced motion. I crossed the room and sliced her through the creatures abdomen. It squealed and kicked as it parted into two twitching pieces.

Bio

J. A. Pitts resides in the Pacific Northwest, where he hunts dragons, trolls, and other beasties among the coffee shops and tattoo parlors.

Publications

Black Blade Blues, Tor Books, 2010
Honeyed Words, Tor Books, 2011
Forged in Fire, Tor Books, 2012

Writing Description

My writing is very character-driven. I currently lean toward Urban Fantasy, but I have published science fiction, horror, and fantasy shorts as well as my novels. The excerpt is from Book Four in my Sarah Beauhall series, in progress.

Writing Goals

My writing goal over the Write-a-thon is 1,000 words a day, or 7k a week, for the length of the event. I'm currently working on Hearth & Home, the fifth book in the Sarah Beauhall series; it's excerpted above.


Website

www.japitts.net


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