BooksChatter: ☀⚡ The Graveyard Shift

Thank you for joining us on the twenty-ninth and penultimate day of Bewitching Book Tours Haunted Halloween Spooktacular which runs every week day until the end of October and showcases 26 different authors!

Today we are featuring The Graveyard Shift, a paranormal romance anthology by Jamie K. Schmidt (26 June 2016, Jamie K. Schmidt, 294 pages).

Don't miss the Spooktacular Flash Fiction by Jamie K. Schmidt.

PREVIEW: Check out the book's synopsis and the Kindle Cloud Reader Preview below.

The Graveyard Shift is on sale for ONLY .99, and it is FREE on Kindle Unlimited and Kindle Owner's Lending Library.

The authors will be awarding a Kindle Fire, Amazon Gift Cards, Books and More to randomly drawn winners via Rafflecopter during the tour. Please do take part: comment on our post and follow the tour where you will be able to read flash fiction (⚡), and guest blog posts (✉).

|| Synopsis || Teasers || About the Author || Giveaway & Tour Stops ||

Synopsis

Erotic, Sexy and Sweet tales of vampires, ghosts, mages, shifters and dreamers of dreams.

In this anthology, you will enter an adult bookstore run by two vampires and partake in the blood letting and sex, see a witch accidentally summon a vampire who gains power through love making, and then go clubbing with an urban vampire.

But vampires aren't the only supernatural beings in this compelling collection of stories. Ghosts jam with their favorite rock bands. A Grail Maiden helps protect Arthur's cup, and a paralyzed cyber mercenary finds love inside virtual reality.

Teasers

KCR Preview | Flash Fiction: Dream Killer |

KCR Preview

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Flash Fiction: Dream Killer

By Jamie K. Schmidt

      I swore I was going to do it. And this time, I meant it. He had finally gone too far,pushed my last button, and said the unforgivable.

“When I married you my dreams died.”

The fight ended quickly after that. In the vacuum silence of words that can’t be taken back, he looked as stunned as I felt. But he put up his chin with false bravado and waited for my one-two riposte. I merely left the room.

The apartment shook when he crashed the door open. He peeled out of the complex driveway in a puff of smoke and burned rubber. A huge belch came from the living room and the stench of burning sulphur wafted into my study. I came out to investigate. My husband’s words had summoned forth a creature that was too small to be a demon, too malevolent to be an imp. The creature was straddling the couch. Its yellow eyes were narrowed at me. It hissed, showing pointy teeth. I crept closer and it swiped out at me, its bony arms like broomsticks. His scissor bladed claws cut the sleeve of my robe. I backed away, threw a pillow at it. It caught it and shredded it into confetti. What was warlock born could not be witched away but it also could not harm me. I hissed back at it and cast a protective spell around my cat, whose back was arched like the letter A.

Three days of silence passed. My husband was grumpy and sullen, rattling the paper and slamming dishes to fill up the emptiness and the quiet. I moved like the walking wounded. There was a hole in my soul where happiness once lived. I was numb. The creature would appear and disappear. Always watching, never attacking us. It played with itself, picked its nose. But for the most part was content with existing in the silence of our world. If my husband noticed it, he gave no sign. I ignored it.

After a week, things gradually started returning to normal. I still pretended to be asleep when he came to bed, when I wasn’t in my office all night staring at the world map and wondering if anyone out there hurt as much as I did. We didn’t talk, but I found I could meet my husband’s eyes. I saw no apology in them, but I really didn’t expect to. The creature faded slightly, became translucent. 

But as I became angrier at the unfairness, the creature fed on my emotions. As I thought, “Did he think that he was the only one who sacrificed, compromised?”, it solidified again. Its teeth and claws elongated and curved into Kris daggers. The creature followed me around and would preen when I clenched and unclenched my fist.

Back in our routine, my husband would go to work and come home. I stopped making supper or cleaning the house. He could do his own laundry and fend for himself. I made phone calls and robotically did what I had to do. He would stay in watching television or stay out late in bars. I didn’t care either way. The creature would curl up on the couch beside him or swing from the drapes, depending on our moods.

Today, I heard my husband in the shower and I walked over to the window of my study and laid my forehead against the window pane. The sensation was like eating ice cream too fast and I had a giddy recollection of summer time. The door slammed and jolted me away from tire swings and seagulls. I sipped my coffee as I watched him get into his car and drive to work. He never looked up. I wonder if he even thought of me. 

The creature plastered its tongue on the window, making huge streaks. Shortly after ten, the movers arrived. I sat on my kitchen counter and watched them professionally pack up my things. The creature, hidden by my invisibility spell, danced around them and jumped from box to box.

“No, that stays.” I said when they started towards the TV set. I directed them to my office and went back to my perch, slowly stirring a head ache relief potion.

The movers were expensive. But if I had to carry box after box into my car all by myself I never would have left him. It wasn’t the first time, I sat contemplating leaving. I would grab a handful of clothes from the closet and got as far as the bed with them. I’d sit and wonder if I should donate most to the Salvation Army before packing. Then I would chide myself for giving up. And I would talk myself into staying. It was harder to leave than in was to stay. We had been playing at being happy for a long time.

I received my power from my dreams and prayers. If I had made him impotent by marrying him, then I could rectify that by leaving him. I picked up my cat and my purse and walked out to the car.

When my husband came home tonight, I wanted him to see the living room as it always was. He wouldn’t notice that my books or my knitting would be gone. Maybe he’d watch TV for a bit. Maybe he would go into the kitchen to raid the leftovers or to pop a frozen dinner in the microwave. He wouldn’t notice my coffee mugs were missing or that my teapot collection had been lovingly removed.

But he would see the creature, formed out of his belligerence and sustained by our negative emotions. I looked up from the parking lot to see it rubbing its butt cheeks against the study windows. They would make a good couple.

The End

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The Graveyard Shift
Available NOW!

About the Author

USA Today bestselling author, Jamie K. Schmidt, writes erotic contemporary love stories and paranormal romances. Her Club Inferno series from Random House’s Loveswept line has hit both the Amazon and Barnes & Noble top one hundred lists. She has two other series with Loveswept: Hawaii Heat, in which the first book Life’s A Beach is the perfect staycation to Maui, and The Sentinels of Babylon, about members of vigilante Motorcycle Club and their old ladies. Her dragon paranormal romance series from Entangled Publishing, has been called “fun and quirky” and “endearing.” Partnered with New York Times bestselling author and former porn actress, Jenna Jameson, Jamie’s hardcover début, SPICE, continues Jenna’s FATE trilogy.

An avid knitter and jewelry maker, Jamie is never bored. She can often be found with a mug of tea on the computer flanked by her little dogs & fluffy white cat. You can follow her on twitter at @Jamiekswriter or on her author page on Facebook. When she's not writing or crafting, Jamie loves playing games, everything from board games to strategy card games, console and online MMORPGs.

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