A peek at something new
And yay, I finished the reboot of Something Strange & Deadly!
WOOHOO!! I finished (finally) my reboot of Something Strange & Deadly—which I’m currently calling simply…
Strange & Deadly.
(Imagine me with jazz hands right here. 👐)
In Classic Sooz Fashion, the ending of S&D involved a ton of colliding plot threads I had to weave together, so it took me a bit longer than planned. (Also Classic Sooz. Always optimistic I’ll finish faster than I ever actually do.)
But YAY! That’s my second book complete this year! Which means I’ve already hit my annual goal of finishing two books before 2027!
Maybe I’ll actually hit my stretch goal of finishing three books this year?! 👀 Wish me luck!
Reminder to pre-order!
Please, please pre-order Four and Twenty Blackbirds!
And just a reminder that all Murder Quartet books release as paperbacks and hardcovers on the same day! So hardcovers are a limited print run, meaning once sold out, then.that’s it. No more printed hardcovers. Only paperbacks after that.
ALSO: stay tuned because the UK cover is coming in just two weeks….🇬🇧
Sneak Peek Voting Results
Over on the Discord, I asked you all to vote on what books you wanted to see teasers from. Imagine my surprise when HALF THE VOTES were for “Something New We Don’t Know Yet.”
Well, okay then! Your vote is my command! Below, I’ve got a teaser from something new you don’t know yet.
Yet rather than give you only the introductory scenes of this WIP (called The Hand That Feeds), I decided to give you both Chapter 1 and Chapter 7. My reasoning? Chapter 1 introduces you to Claudia and her job/personality.
Then Chapter 7 is where you get to meet my most favorite character: Grayson Blue. 😍
Truly. Grayson Blue is quite possibly my most favorite character I have ever written.
I know, I know. I always say I don’t pick favorites—and that’s not a lie! I am obsessed with whomever I am currently writing, otherwise I have no motivation to write my books.
But ungh.
Grayson Blue.
He’s just so distinctly himself.And despite the gruesome name and also, yes, frequent murder and some monsters, The Hand That Feeds is probably my funniest book after TE3.
So enjoy the early look, dear friends!
The Hand That Feeds
On the hot, sticky Emerald Isle of Her Majesty’s Empire, in the vibrant metropolis of Larenia, three powerful families reign supreme. As the heads of industry, there is nothing the Diarz, Mota, and Blue families do not control—a lesson that duty-minded Detective Constable Claudia Cartwright has learned the hard way. After she failed to arrest Reginald Diarz for the murder of his wife a year ago, she found herself demoted from the tippiest top right on down to the grimiest bottom.
Her mother would say it’s her own fault for getting greedy. And while yes Claudia’s ambition sometimes sends her down rash pathways, her unwavering sense of justice always gets her back on course.
When the charismatic (and conspiracy-minded) reporter, Grayson Blue, shows up with a scoop on the allegedly magical serial killer known as Mack the Knife, Claudia’s first instinct is to kick Grayson to the curb. But when she herself has a run-in with the masked man of urban legends, her ambition and hunger for justice end up on a collision course.
From the science-filled Royal Institute to glittering galas at the opera, from holy temples to gas-filled mine shafts, Claudia will peel back a twisted world of gods, cults, and magic that she never imagined were lurking in the shadows of her beloved Larenia. Yet it’s the mysteries close to her heart that might be hardest for her to solve.
Chapter 1
Detective Constable Claudia Cartwright has always wondered if there might be something wrong with her.
After all, most people, when they look upon death, don’t feel flutters of excitement in their abdomen. They don’t think, Finally, something interesting to examine. And they absolutely do not start mentally cataloging every detail for later perusal in their mind’s eye.
Although, admittedly, the sheer number of flies is making it hard to get a good look at much of anything here in Awful Bank, where the stench of fish offal is so strong, it overpowers the coppery blood that should be wafting of this young man’s body.
Five steps away from Claudia, a match flares. The offal and sun-baked seaweed briefly disappear beneath sulfur dioxide…then tobacco smoke. Without a thought, Claudia summons a glass ashtray from her khaki constabulary uniform and slides her arm sideways. Several moments later, the first ash from Chief Inspector Erik Hudsson’s cigarette lands.
“Well,” he says from around his cigarette. “That’s a new one. Death by flagpole.”
“Yes,” Claudia agrees. She has seen quite a few corpses in her career—and in all manner of misery and mayhem—but death by flagpole…
Well, it shouldn’t be as exciting as it is.
Tap, tap, tap. Hudsson’s cigarette makes a familiar rhythm on the ashtray. “Any identification on him?”
“No, sir.”
“Any match to missing persons?”
“Not yet, sir.”
Hudsson sighs. “Anything useful at all for me, Constable?”
Claudia winces—internally only, of course. She has trained herself to be as expressionless as a can of tuna because Hudsson really doesn’t like all those lady emotions. (Which Claudia is pretty certain are the same emotions all other genders possess as well.)
Scientific detachment! reminds a voice like Terrence.
“No, sir,” Claudia says again. “There’s nothing useful so far, but I haven’t finished surveying the scene. And once the white coats have contained the area, they might uncover something that can help us.”
Hudsson takes a long drag of his cigarette. His broad chest expands within his suit. “Mightuncover something,” he says, “but probably won’t. It’s Awful Bank. Everything here is contaminated by the fish.”
And that, sir, is why you never solve a case. Claudia nods her head. “Very good point, sir. Although the canning factories are several blocks away. You’ll notice this alley is actually quite clean—”
Hudsson interrupts her with a jaw-cracking yawn. Thick blue smoke curls from his mouth. There’s ash in his mustache—old ash that Claudia suspects has been there since last night, given that last night marks one of his biweekly evenings at the Grand Casino on Eighth Ave…
And oh gods, why does she know this information? Why can’t her brain eject useless facts like the rhythms of her boss’s gambling habit? Why must she hang onto every useless thing she ever notices?
Once upon a time, she was the foremost detective in the Royal Constabulary. Youngest Chief Inspector in Larenia! A real prodigy! How the hell did she drop so low?
“Alrighty,” Hudsson says eventually. “I’ll leave you to this. I’ve got business uphill.”
“Up…hill, sir?” Claudia blinks. “Has there been a crime?”
“I assume so.” His mustache wiggles. His chest expands. “One of the families wants to see me. They’ve asked for me direct ‘cause they’ve got a case that needs solving—and they think I’m the man to do it.”
So much for scientific detachment. Claudia’s interest is so sharply piqued, her entire body cants toward Hudsson. The next flick of cigarette ash lands on her sleeve. “You, sir?”
Hudsson smiles. “Me, Constable. They asked for me.” He stubs the cigarette into the ashtray—which Claudia almost drops because she completely forgot she was holding it. Ash scatters like flower petals across the body.
Until a sea breeze gusts through. It scatters the ash into the sticky morning air, while the flag—ripped in half, so only part of Her Majesty’s golden crown is visible—waves as limply as Claudia’s hair.
“Report to me back at the office,” Hudsson declares before spinning on a scuffed heel and aiming for the alley’s end.
Claudia can do nothing but watch him go, her arm still outstretched. The ashtray still in hand.
One of the flies lands on its rim. She stares at it with unseeing eyes, while two different scenarios compete for space inside her brain. One: Hudsson goes uphill, where he takes a case for the most powerful families in Larenia; he fails miserably at solving it; and everyone at the Royal Constabulary will have no choice but to acknowledge Claudia should once more be Chief Inspector. (Youngest Chief Inspector in Larenia! A real prodigy!)
Two: Hudsson goes uphill, where he takes a case for the most powerful families in Larenia; he fails miserably at solving it; and whatever lives were at stake end up ruined because he’s good for absolutely nothing except shedding mustache hairs and cigarette ash.
Claudia frowns at the very ruined corpse that used to be handsome when he was alive. It’s an undeniably fascinating crime scene. A flagpole through the ribcage that feels just a little too posed for a hasty crime of passion. Three minutes ago, she was excited by it.
Now she is only annoyed.
Footsteps clomp. Familiar in their general air of grumpiness, meaning the first white coat has arrived. Everyone calls him Sawbones because no one ever remembers his real name, even though it’s written on all the coroner’s reports: Doctor Seamus Kelly. To everyone, he’s just plain Sawbones, the former navy medic turned coroner whose default expression is a scowl.
Scratch that. It’s his only expression. Even when he smiles, he scowls. And laughter? Scowl, scowl, scowl all while chuckles rumble up from his long chest. Mostly though, his scowls are simply the standard unhappy sort you’d expect.
“Cartwright,” he gruffs out.
“Sawbones,” she replies.
His white lab coat is buttoned over the usual antiquated suit he likes to wear. He’s not an old man—early forties at most—but he dresses like Claudia’s grandfather and even wears muttonchops. Brown ones with gray streaks. If not for the round, silver spectacles on his crooked nose, he’d look more like the sailor he once was than a medical professional tasked with examining crime scenes.
“Are you finished here?” Sawbones sets his usual black doctor’s bag and larger gray supply satchel on a “clean” space several feet from the corpse.
No is what Claudia ought to say, given she hasn’t actually explored much of this particular crime scene at all. And now that the morning sun has lifted high enough to beam past the hills of Awful Bank, she has excellent lighting inside this nasty alleyway near the dockyards.
And no is what she ought to say because if she can solve this murder while Hudsson is distracted by something uphill, she might actually be able to claim the credit that’s due her for once—instead of having him sweep in and steal it.
But dammit, what if someone in Upper Larenia needs help?
“Do you know why Hudsson was called uphill?” She turns a hopeful expression upon Sawbones.
Unfortunately, all she gets in return is the lift of a single bushy eyebrow, pale brown like his muttonchops and hair. “Is that where he was going?”
Claudia sighs. “Then no, I’m not done here, and I would very much like to drown my frustrations in viscera. First things first, Sawbones, I need a time of death.”
Chapter 7
The first thing you need to know about Grayson Blue is this: at least half of everything he says is a lie.
Second: anything he says that isn’t a lie is still most likely untrue because despite his—as painful as it is to admit—good reporting and beautiful writing for the Larenia Gazette, the man is also shockingly gullible. Prone to parroting out facts of dubious origin with all the conviction of an evangelist.
There’s slime people at the bottom of the bay, Claudia. I’m sure of it.
The Ritreicher Mine incident was a conspiracy involving an ancient curse, CeeCee. I promise you that.
Did you hear about that half-bat boy born over in Awful Bay? He’s got wings.
Which is why, on any usual day, if Grayson Blue darkens Claudia’s door with a proposal, she tells him to shove it where the sun never shines.
This always makes him laugh.
It does not, however, make him go away, as is plainly evident at this precise moment beside the Sultry Seven’s bar.
Over their six years of acquaintanceship, Grayson’s proposals to Claudia have ranged from, I’ll give you a tenner if you let me look in the evidence locker, to I need a date for the races, and you’re short enough not to block the view—wanna join? He has asked her to take bribes, give bribes, trade bribes, lie on record, lie off record, and once, enter the Goldenhand Cult under pretenses she’d like to join them.
There is no gutter Grayson won’t squirm into for a scoop, and no person he won’t drag into the gutter alongside him.
Tonight, however, before Claudia can offer her standard retort regarding sunless places, Grayson leans in and murmurs, “I’ve got information on your dead man, if that sweetens the pot at all.”
Claudia blanches. If Sawbones revealed details about their murder victim, then she doesn’t care if he’s the best coroner at the station. She will arrest him.
Grayson grins, as if following her thoughts. “Come on then, CeeCee. Follow me.” He shifts to leave.
And Claudia slaps a hand on his much higher shoulder. “This is my post. I have to watch the bar for pickpockets.”
Grayson blinks a guileless blink. “No you don’t. I already got Uncle Jorgen to let you go for an hour.”
Right. Uncle Jorgen. Of course Grayson would be related to the casino’s owner. Because all the families in Upper Larenia mix and match so that their beautiful, spoiled brats can produce more beautiful, spoiled brats.
Grayson nods, as if satisfied Claudia will follow, then he embarks. And unlike Claudia, he blends easily into the sea of wealthy and wealthy-aspiring with his perfect tux and easy confidence. With his long legs that move like a dancer’s (literally a dancer’s because his mother made him take ballet as a boy).
In moments, he has vanished, forcing Claudia to hop-to if she wants to keep up.
And curse her, but she does want to keep up.
Which has always been her problem with Grayson Blue: every now and then he will bring her a useful scoop. A bit like Roger the cat when he drops dead creatures onto Claudia’s doorstep.
Claudia scampers into the crowd, ice jostling in her glass as she resumes her earlier dip and weave. It takes her several seconds, but there. She finds the distinctive white streak in Grayson’s hair.
It slides from his left temple to the back of his head, tapering to a point like an arrow, and Claudia is thoroughly convinced it’s the work of bleach and a hair stylist. (If she ever finds evidence of this, she will absolutely leak it to Grayson’s rival, Thandris Gruin at the Daily Herald.)
At the hallway in which only high rollers are allowed, Grayson pauses long enough for Claudia to catch up. “She’s with me, Dickie,” he tells the bouncer.
The man bows his head.
And it is absurd to observe. A bull mastiff of a man genuflecting to the human embodiment of a greyhound.
Dickie ignores Claudia as she passes by, and since Grayson’s greyhound legs claim two steps for every one of Claudia’s, she has to run to keep up.
The hall stretches before her, splitting off at several points before ending in a rounded stairwell. They ascend, Grayson at the lead as the steps curl and curl. As the noise of the Sultry Seven fades to distant laughter. As the stench of tobacco clears to reveal a smell like lemons and old money.
On the second floor, panels of mirrors send Claudia’s reflection bouncing back and forth, each version of her smaller than the last. She looks stoutly at the red rug instead of all those little Claudias in their hideous puce gown. (Really, why did she waste her money on this thing?)
Three doors down on the left, and Grayson finally stops. Click goes a lock. Then Grayson swings the door open and motions for Claudia to step inside.
She follows and finds a simple space with a felt-covered table at the center, four chairs, a private bar on the left, and a great deal more red.
Grayson shuts the door behind her and after motioning Claudia to the table, he meanders to the bar. In seconds, he’s got a scotch on the rocks. Claudia doesn’t recognize the label, but she’s willing to bet it costs more than the Winter Tern.
Lamps turn Grayson’s naturally brown skin to coppery; the white streak in his hair flashes. Despite his lanky proportions and, frankly, only middling attractiveness (for a Blue, at least), there is something compulsively watchable about him. Maybe it’s the dancer’s grace, maybe it’s the rich-man confidence, maybe it’s the constant, constant droop of one shoulder to the side as if he and gravity can’t decide who’s in charge…
Whatever the reason, Claudia hates how hard it is to pry her attention away.
She claims a seat at the card table. Then she gulps back enough gin and tonic to make her brain hurt. “My dead guy,” she prompts once Grayson is step-ball-changing toward her. “Tell me what you know.”
“Counter proposal.” Grayson leads against the table’s edge, one ankle kicking over the other. “I tell you what I know after you hear why I’ve been trying to find you.”
“No.” Another sip of Winter Tern. It is entirely too smooth. “Tell me about my dead guy or I walk.”
“But CeeCee, this is urgent.”
“Your definition of urgent rarely aligns with mine.” Claudia sets her drink onto the table. “And you know I hate that nickname. Say it again, and I’m out the door. Immediately.”
“Fine, Claudia.” He lifts his hands. “Edward was killed by Mack the Knife. Now onto what I need—”
“Noooo. No, no, no.” Claudia tips her head back and groans at the ceiling. “Why did I think you might actually have something useful for me?” Another groan for good measure before she pushes away from the table. “When will I learn my blasted lesson about you?”
Grayson sidles into her path. “Hold up. It is a good tip, and I have evidence this time.”
“Mack the Knife isn’t real, Grayson.”
“Of course he is.” Heat flashes in Grayson’s eyes. His irises are nearly as dark as his pupils, and with his thick, black lashes, it sometimes looks as if there’s no whites in there at all.
It always makes Claudia think of the Eyeless One.
“You can go see for yourself at Queen’s Welcome. I’ll even join you, if you like.”
“Oh, will you? How generous. Just like when you offered to join me at the Mota factory, where they were putting…what was it? Mind-control magnets into their watches?”
“You still haven’t proved me wrong on that one.”
“And how about Her Majesty being a lizard person?”
“Do you have any evidence to the contrary?”
“Or that time…oh, when was it? A year ago, when you swore up and down that you had proof Reginald Diarz killed his wife? But on the day you were supposed to bring the proof to me, so I could get my warrant, you didn’t show up?”
Now he winces.
“I’m done here, Grayson.” Claudia really is done, and when she tries to sidestep him again, he doesn’t interfere.
He does, however, chase alongside her (like an actual greyhound).
“I will pay you, Claudia. Name your price. Hourly rate, daily rate—whatever you want, it’s yours. That advertisemet I put onto the station bulletin board was serious. I need help. I have a scoop, and I can’t crack it without your brilliance. Besides, don’t you want the evidence I have about Mack the Knife? You could arrest the man and go down in history for it.”
Claudia snorts. She’s almost to the door now. “Sure, Grayson, lay it on me.”
“Only if you help.”
“In that case, no. I don’t want the evidence.”
Grayson hesitates, which gives Claudia time to stomp into the hallway. Then keep on stomping. Because the reality is that, if not for Grayson Blue, then Claudia would still be Chief Inspector.
And worse—if not for Grayson Blue, then Reginald Diarz would be in jail right now, rotting away like he deserves.
Claudia reaches the stairs. But of course Grayson has caught up to her. “Don’t you want to know what Chief Inspector Hudsson is up to? Don’t you want to know why he was called uphill?”
Grayson is whispering these questions, as if he’s afraid all those endless ears in the endless mirrors are actually listening.
And although Claudia hates herself…she does stop. Then square herself toward him. He’s close enough for her to smell his whiskey and see how it has wet his bottom lip. “What do you know?”
“Shhh.” He dips closer. “I don’t know much. But it definitely has to do with your old friend Reginald, and...” A furtive glance left and right. A lick at that whiskey on his lip. “Well, his daughter Lilac is missing. But wait—don’t get upset about what I’m going to say next.”
Claudia scowls. “Of course I’m going to get upset, Grayson.” She opens her arms. “But say it anyway. You always do.”
He sighs. Then offers an uncharacteristic frown before saying, “I swear to you, CeeCee. On my honor, I swear Lilac Diarz has been kidnapped, and it’s Mack the Knife who’s taken her.”
I realize I’ve probably not yet convinced you to adore Grayson, but that’s okay! When I finish this quirky fantasy detective mystery, you will get to experience and see for yourself.
Now, off I go to do a quick edit of S&D before sending it off to helpful readers!
Thanks for being amazing, friends. 😘
💚 - Sooz
Oh Sooz! This is so delightful! Thank you for the sneak peak!
Love love love! I am very excited about the new sneak peek!