I say this is Mitzi Magee’s family because the idea of a MITZI MAGEE: VAMPIRE POODLE series was born here, inspired by our dog Pete, who isn’t even part poodle, and we intend to post about family doings. When there are two married writers in a family, family doings can be a little unusual. Bruce and I will both be posting here (and perhaps Pete; we don’t know if he can type yet) and we’ll try to keep you abreast of projects, passions, and pains…

                                                               With love and humor,

                                                                April Campbell Jones

SHE’S HOT! SHE’S FAST! SHE’S SEXY! AND SHE’S SPAYED!
When small town reporter Ed Magee wrote his latest small town story for his small town newspaper he knew he was onto something big! Maybe the biggest story of his life! But even Ed didn’t know he’d just written a life-altering article, even Ed wasn’t prepared for the reaction from his small town boss and editor– who read the piece, smiled up at Ed, patted him on the back, and fired him immediately! 

BUT WHEN THINGS GET TOUGH—THE TOUGH GET GOING!
And Ed went straight to the top! The top of Topeka Blvd to Elsie’s Bar, and trusted friend and ally Jack Daniels! He was dead drunk in fifteen minutes! Yet no amount of alcohol could blur the vision of loveliness sitting down on the stool beside him…the soft, raven hair, the luscious red lips, grab-me dress and hypnotic eyes… that beckoned and teased a mesmerized Ed with bold and provocative promises! How could he know this dark witch was drawing him into a forbidden world of sinister pleasure and unearthly desires, a vortex of unearthly sensations more outrageously voluptuous than his wildest dreams! How could he possibly know this shadowy seductress would vanish in a huff and stick him with the tab?

THAT’S WHEN THINGS GET REALLY HOT!
Beaten? Down trodden? Fired from his job and jilted at the bar? Maybe. But that didn’t mean Ed Magee wasn’t suicidal. He trudged back to his little two room dump to lick his wounds…never dreaming, never conceiving, that someone would be there waiting to lick them for him. Waiting to lick him all over! The raven-haired seductress from the bar? No. The pert young secretary from his ex-job? No. The middle-aged landlord with the mustache and the tattoo on her left arm? No. She would come later at the first of the month. What awaited Ed now in his humble, rent-tardy bungalow was the last person on this Earth Ed Magee expected to see: his old boss and editor from the small town paper!

BACK ON TOP!
Ed had barely gotten the top back on the can of month-old Spam when he saw the figure waiting quietly on his living room couch. What was his old newspaper boss doing here–having just fired him an hour earlier? More importantly, how had he gotten in through the locked door? More importantly than that, what was he doing wearing Ed’s own suit? Even still more importantly why were his ex-bosses’ eyes glowing red now like a bat’s and when had he acquired those shiny white fangs? And why was he leaping across the room now to bury those fangs in Ed’s throat? All the while muttering about how vampires were taking over the town…in fact, the whole world! And would Ed be interesting in joining the movement? And would there be medical benefits, Ed wonders, if you’re already dead? And would the stacked brunette at the bar be there? And whose poodle just crashed through the living room window behind Ed’s ex-boss…and why did it have fiery red eyes and glistening fangs too! And who’s going to pay for that window when the landlord shows?

THE CURSE
Ed cursed himself for not paying the cable bill and keeping up with CNN–clearly there was a lot more going on in the world than he was privy to. But in the next few seconds, Ed Magee, ex-newspaper reporter and sometimes moderate-to-heavy drinker, would discover not only just how nightmarishly unbelievable the world had become, how there was a war going on that would put every person on Earth in peril, but that to fight that war–even without a job—he’d not only have to put his very soul at peril, but somehow afford a dog license!

CAN YOUR NERVES STAND THE STRAIN?
Can any sane person remain sane under the ceaseless horror awaiting him in the nerve-shattering pages of this novel? Only to realize he’s been totally ripped off because the real answers don’t come until well into the series’ third book! Only you, and millions like you—no, billions like you–can know the answers to these questions…questions that demand yet more answers that in return require yet more questions!

I spent most of this Saturday editing a massive horror novel my brilliantly talented husband has written, thus bringing up the subject of professional jealousy in our household. And I’d say it was rampant.

I’ve been Bruce’s first editor from the time we met. He, on the other hand, seldom reads anything I have written. By myself, that is. Often we write together, which means mainly we plot together and he does the actual writing, though not always.

Frankly, I hate to write. I just happen to love what I have written, and often it comes out of the blue anyway and it’s like reading it for the first time. The advantage to being Bruce’s first editor is that I get to read his stuff before anyone else does. The disadvantage is, when I’m editing Bruce’s book, I’m not writing my own.

You’d think that professional jealousy would not rear its ugly head between two people as crazy about each other as we are, but it’s plagued us from the beginning. We often had to work in different fields just to avoid it. And when we do work together, there’s always the question of who wrote what and which one of us came up with what idea. It gets pretty ridiculous sometimes, since Bruce has no memory for that sort of thing at all and I remember every little detail.

Our writing is actually nothing alike, though I can do a pretty fair imitation of Bruce’s style and have on occasion. But we both grew up on sci-fi and mystery stories, Shirley Jackson, and Alfred Hitchcock films, so we have a lot in common as far as our pop culture vocabulary goes. Nowdays it’s easy to tell the books we own apart; Bruce likes to read male writers and fiction, and I’ll read anything except a romance novel.

I’ve always been Bruce’s biggest fan. I’ve often wished he were mine. That spot is taken by my daughter Akisha, an enormous April booster and someone who has read my screenplays and attempts at novels over the years. As it is she and I often have exactly the same book, we like the same things as far as reading goes, and I trust her implicitly.

Bruce still doesn’t read my writing, exactly the way Richard Matthews in my book, LIE LIKE A WOMAN, does not read the novels Bree, his wife, writes. You could say it was art imitating life…

http://www.amazon.com/LIE-LIKE-WOMAN-Richard-Matthews-ebook/dp/B003VYC7BM/ref=la_B0041P91GO_1_9?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1401814129&sr=1-9

The Auctioneer by Joan Samson

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

THE AUCTIONEER is a strange, subtle, beautifully written book about how evil comes slowly and insidiously to the small New England farming town of Harlowe in the form of Perly Dunsmore, a charismatic, handsome middle age traveler who has taken the town to his bosom, declaring it the epitome of old-fashioned values and morals.

The main couple, Mim and John Moore, are hard working farmers with a generations old farm that both of them cherish. They live with John’s elderly crippled mother and their five year old golden locked daughter Hildie–though they live simply and work endlessly, they are happy. Without warning Perly, along with the local sheriff Bob Gore, come by to pick up an item for their fundraising auction one Thursday afternoon. Mim and John give gladly, and are surprised when Perly refunds them part of the money he made selling their object. But soon Perly and the new “deputies” are coming every Thursday to collect, and the objects the Moores are forced to relinquish become more and more necessary and precious, and in an unpredictable twist John is driven by the final “auction” to either desert his ancestor’s homeland or take a violent stand.

Writing in the best Shirley Jackson tradition, that is, that evil lurks just behind a neighborly smile, Joan Sampson wrote this book in the seventies when urban dwellers in the Northwest were rushing the farmlands, trying to buy a piece of simplicity as a counterpoint to their crime-ridden cities. This book reminds me of THE CHILD BUYER, without its sardonic slant. In its own way it is a tale of horror though the horror exists in the human soul.

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