Today I am very excited to welcome Andrea Speed to Joyfully Jay.  Andrea is here as part of her Josh of the Damned virtual blog tour.  I just love this series and reviewed the latest installment earlier today.  Please join me in welcoming Andrea! 

This blog tour is an attempt to be different, and an attempt to go back to my serial roots. Each blog post will have a segment in a running story, pages from Josh’s diary, about his first encounter with the tragic figure of Dan Fosse. Why is he tragic? Read on, and you will find out. I hope you enjoy it, and I hope you check out the Josh of the Damned: Triple Feature.

Beginning of Part 2

It was weird, kind of a skritching noise, and my mind instantly traveled to mice. Could we have mice? I was pretty sure the werewolves would eat ’em if they could find ’em. They ate everything else. But I grabbed the silver broomstick from under the counter before I opened the backroom door.

I don’t know who was more surprised. Me or the big panda just sitting there. He was pudgy and about half my height when sitting back on his haunches. Big, liquid eyes in a black and white face. To my credit, I didn’t shriek, but maybe I kinda jumped back a bit. Were we infested with pandas now?

The panda didn’t do anything, not for a long while. Finally it moved forward, slowly, like a sloth maybe, while I stood behind the counter, still holding the broomstick in case I needed to smack it for some reason. But it wandered out into the store, walking down the aisle like it was shopping. I remembered Dan and stuck my head in the back room, but he wasn’t there. What was there were his clothes, his grungy jeans and plaid shirt, slightly shredded on the floor. For a second I thought that maybe the panda had eaten him, but there was no blood, and how the hell could it have eaten him with no noise beyond that scratching? It just seemed less weird than the other possibility: Dan had become a panda.

Well, that was completely nuts. Werewolves, sure, but who ever heard of a werepanda? Now that was just crazy. Still … where was Dan? And it would explain why he existed in the hell dimension. Maybe. Well, if a werepanda was anything like a werewolf. How could that be? What did pandas do? Also, what did they eat?

Electronics don’t always work in the store, ’cause the hell dimension seems to play havoc on that kind of stuff, but eventually I was able to get through to Google on my phone. Pandas weren’t really known as meat eaters, although they were known to eat carrion (eww). But mainly they ate bamboo. Did we have any bamboo? I knew there were bamboo shoots in cans, but I was pretty sure we didn’t have those. What did you give a werepanda? And how angry would he get if I didn’t have anything for him? If he was anything like the werewolves, he’d start tearing the store apart.

Crap in a hat, why does this kind of thing always happen to me? I guess it’s my fault for taking a job at a convenience store on the mouth of hell. You know, it seemed like a good idea at the time. But so did pink hair in the 9th grade, and look what that got me. Damn it.

End of Part 2

Andrea also has a great giveaway for us today! At the end of her tour she will be choosing one lucky commenter to win a copy of one of her backlist books. So be sure to leave a comment here and at the other blog stops for your chance to win!