Book Blast - Hungry Business - Maria DeBlassie

 

Hungry Business: A Short Story

by Maria DeBlassie

 

~~~~~~~~~~~~~

 

GENRE: Gothic, Horror (Cozy)

 

~~~~~~~~~~~~~

 

BLURB:

 

From the multi-award-winning author of Everyday Enchantments: Musings on Ordinary Magic & Daily Conjurings comes a cozy Gothic short story about searching for connection in a world that's forgotten the power of everyday magic.

 

Looking for love can be deadly...

 

You know how it goes.  You go out, hoping to meet someone.  You wade through your fair share of brainless automatons, lifeless bodies, and ravenous undead good at passing as human.  

 

The more you go out, the less hope you feel and the colder your body gets.  But you keep at it.  All you need is one beating heart to match your own before yours stops pumping altogether.  How hard can it be to find one living, breathing human in a city full of bodies? 

 

Dating. 

 

It's hungry business. 

 

~~~~~~~~~~~~

Excerpt Three:

 

At home, you take a bath as hot as you can stand and read an old bodice ripper until the warmth returns to your veins, and the flames of hope have been fanned enough that you can crawl into your flannel jammies and be grateful you are still alive. The light in your apartment slowly seeps into your chest, and you settle into your perch on the window.

 

You inspect the damage to your pinky finger as you wait for the cat to appear.  The bath stopped the spread of the decay but the tip is gray and blue.  There is puss where your fingernail should have been.  You smother it in aloe vera, grated ginger, and bandages, hoping it will be enough to bring life back into your appendage. You don’t really know how to treat something like this.  You sigh and lean back against the window frame.  Your orange tabby cat has made its appearance—yours, yes, thought you know you shouldn’t feel so possessive about a creature you only know from a distance.  It’s just nice to know it’s there.                       

 

Here’s the thing you love about the cat across the way: It’s proof that there are other beating hearts out there.  Cats won’t settle where Hungries live.  Perhaps their feline instincts tell them they’re easy prey for the things that are never satiated.  That’s why you never see alley cats in the humanless neighborhoods.  In fact, it was their strange mass exodus from certain parts of the city that first alerted officials to the virus now plaguing them.  And this cat—bright orange like a flame with a soft, full belly—seems happy enough in its home.  You wonder what kind of human it belongs to.     

 

 

 

~~~~~~~~~~~~~

 

Guest Post :  Searching for Soul in a FOMO World .

Searching for Soul in a FOMO World

 

We’ve all been there.  Too much out there.  Too much hustle and bustle.  Too many late nights out that leave you feeling empty the next day.  Too much small talk and too little real connection.  After a while, you start to wonder why you keep at it.  But you do—keep at it that, that is.  Because the alternative is terrifying.  Think about it: if we stop moving so fast, stop living so superficially, what if we find we’ve become as empty as the fast-paced life we’ve been living?

 

That’s the Fear of Missing Out (FOMO) for you. 

 

It’s like we’re all on some carousel ride, afraid to get off, so we just travel round and round, never really going anywhere.  Take the protagonist in my cozy Gothic short story, Hungry Business.  She wants love, a meaningful relationship, in a world that seems full of lifeless bodies.  She’s got a lot of heart and a lot of hope, but she’s struggling to find the kind of everyday magic that leads us back to ourselves and genuine connection with others. 

 

So she’s got two choices.  The first is to keep doing what she’s doing, knowing she’ll only produce the same soul-numbing results. That’s the easy part—to keep on the carousel, despite knowing full well it’s only driving you in circles.  The second is to trust her instincts and pull inward.  Strangely, that idea is more terrifying than the soullessness plaguing the city because it requires her to get real about who she is, what she truly wants, and what she’s willing to do to get it.

 

Let’s face it.  We live in a world that demands we constantly perform living our best life.  The thing is, what makes life wonderful—joyful and deeply meaningful—rarely has anything to do with what mainstream society tells us will make us happy.  It’s not about how many Instagram-worthy things you do or how many friends you have.  It’s about meaningful connection—with self, with others, with the greater universe.

 

Corny, I know.  But it’s true! 

 

I’ll tell you another truth—what really happens when we get off that soulless carousel.  We don’t find emptiness or a vast stretch of nothing.  We find our footing.  We learn what it means to be still and listen.  We find ourselves. 

 

We let go of the expirations the world puts on us, the ones we’ve internalized and the ones that taught us to be afraid of our depths.  We let go of toxic FOMO culture and relearn what genuine enjoyment and connection feel like.  But like the protagonist in Hungry Business has to learn, when you really want something, truly need it, you have to take that leap of faith. 

 

That’s when the magic happens. 

 

 

AUTHOR Bio and Links:

 

Maria DeBlassie, Ph.D. is a native New Mexican mestiza blogger, award-winning writer, and award-winning educator living in the Land of Enchantment. Her first book, Everyday Enchantments: Musings on Ordinary Magic & Daily Conjurings (Moon Books 2018), and her ongoing blog, Enchantment Learning & Living are about everyday magic, ordinary gothic, and the life of a kitchen witch. When she is not practicing her own brand of brujeria, she’s reading, teaching, and writing about bodice rippers and things that go bump in the night.  She is forever looking for magic in her life and somehow always finding more than she thought was there. Find out more about Maria and conjuring everyday magic at www.mariadeblassie.com.

 

Social Media Links:

 

https://linktr.ee/mdeblassie

 https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC7rY-gLkSH-w8uuVyrhVALA

https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/17535853.Maria_DeBlassie

https://www.facebook.com/EnchantmentLL

https://twitter.com/EnchantmentLL

https://www.pinterest.com/mdeblassieell

 

The book is $0.99 during the tour

 

Amazon buy link: https://www.amazon.com/Hungry-Business-Short-Maria-DeBlassie-ebook/dp/B08L48MVHD

 

 

~~~~~~~~~~~~~

 

GIVEAWAY INFORMATION and RAFFLECOPTER CODE

 

Maria DeBlassie will be awarding a free ecopy of Hungry Business to a randomly drawn winner via rafflecopter during the tour.

 

<a href="http://www.rafflecopter.com/rafl/display/28e4345f3582">

Enter to win a copy of the short story - a Rafflecopter giveaway</a>