Today I am so pleased to welcome Sam Burns to Joyfully Jay. Sam has come as part of the Coastal Magic Convention Blog Tour to talk to us about her latest release, Fluke and the Faultline Fiasco. Please join me in giving her a big welcome!

 

Hey, thanks to Jay for having me here to talk about Coastal Magic!

This is going to be my first time going, but after spending a few years considering attending as a guest because of the amazing authors there, you can imagine how excited I was to be invited to be one of them. The spread of authors this year is no less exciting than before, so if you have a chance, I hope you’ll join us in Florida next February 24th for some fun bookish times!

coastal magic badgeI haven’t seen the actual ocean in—no joke—over twenty years, so if you’re attending, chances are if you don’t find me hanging out at the nearest Starbucks buying all the chai a person can drink, I’ll be on the beach.

The other thing I’m here to talk about is The Fantastic Fluke. Book three, Fluke and the Faultline Fiasco, comes out tomorrow, and I brought an exclusive excerpt for Jay’s readers, since I think most people need a few more foxy antics in their lives.

In the five months between the release of the faultline fiasco and book four, Fluke and the Frontier Farce, I’ll be sending out monthly short story snippets about everyone’s favorite fox, so if you’re not signed up to get my newsletters, sign up here.

Coastal Magic Convention is a casual reader weekend in Daytona Beach and takes place February 24-27, 2022. You can check out the website at http://CoastalMagicConvention.com if you want to learn a little more about the event. And if you are interested in signing up, you can register here


Excerpt

I was freaking buzzing. It was like I’d downed a whole pot of coffee. Like I was full of all this pent-up energy, and needed to just—

Shake.

But that wasn’t me shaking. It was everything else.

The deep rumbling killed any attempt at sleep. It sounded like it was coming from everywhere. Like an earthquake. I scowled and pushed my blanket aside.

Seriously? A damned earthquake was the last thing we needed.

On the other side of the bed, Gideon sat up, rubbing his eyes. “Goddammit.”

A slinky shadow came inching down the hallway, sticking close to the wall, letting out a low whine as he went.

I patted the bed in front of me. “Come on, Fluke. It’s just an earthquake. It’ll be over in a minute.”

Yeah, I know.

You’re supposed to get up and find a doorway or something. I’d like to lie and say that my blasé attitude was all because I’d warded the house against earthquakes—and I had—but honestly, it was pretty much the attitude a guy tended to have, growing up in Southern California.

Clearly, Fluke was not as used to them, because he threw himself into my chest, shaking in terror.

Before I had a chance to assure him everything was fine, my breath caught, and the reverberations of the earthquake hit me hard. Except . . . not. This wasn’t an earthquake. The ground had stopped shaking.

Now, it was everything else that quaked.

It was inside me, like before, when I’d been nearly vibrating, but now it was in surround sound, coming from every direction.

“What the hell is that?” Gideon asked, wrapping his arms around us both from behind.

Fluke whined again, wriggling, even more panicked.

The night had gone silent—the kind of silence you get in a power outage, when not even so much as the refrigerator is running—but the buzzing in my veins was almost a sound in itself. A presence.

Both Fluke and I jerked back into Gideon when the magic slammed into me.


Blurb

When an earthquake shakes up Sage’s night, his instinct is to forget about it. They live in California—quakes happen. But this one sends the consciousness that lives in the ley lines running to him in fear, so he and his gunslinger boyfriend set out to investigate. What they uncover is a century-old plot to destroy not only the ley lines, but the city of Junction itself.

Now, they’re in a race against an unknown adversary who wants to annihilate everything they love, and the only man with the answers is Sage’s long-dead Uncle Jonathon. Good thing they only have to read his journals, not deal with the insufferable jerk in person.

Between a heist to steal a magic artifact, Uncle Jonathon’s bigoted ramblings, and one surprise after another from his allies, can Sage find what he needs to save Junction?

Fluke and the Faultline Fiasco is third in its series, so if you haven’t read a Fluke book before, you should definitely start with book one, The Fantastic Fluke. The Faultline Fiasco is a 65k word novel that follows the continuing adventures of Sage, Fluke, Gideon, and their whole family, as they try to save the world. Or at least Southern California.


Bio

Sam is an author of LGBTQIA+ fiction, mostly light-hearted fantasy romances. Most of her books include a little violence, a fair amount of swearing, and maybe a sex scene or two. Oh, and let’s not forget a fox. He’d be offended at being forgotten.

She is a full-time writer who lives in the Midwest with her husband and cat. Someday, she plans to be a full-time writer who lives near the ocean with her husband and cat.