GUEST POST ~ Easy, Kitten by Holly Day #GuestPost #Excerpt
✨ GUEST POST ✨
Hello, everyone! Thank you, lovely Addison, for allowing me back on the blog yet again. I’m Holly Day, and I really like to celebrate things 🥳
No, I’m joking. I don’t like celebrations, I don’t do parties, and I don’t even leave my house more than for dog walks. But! I write MM Romance stories for specific days. For example, last month, I published a story for Invite An Alien To Live With You Day. This month, we’re celebrating International Can-It-Forward Day.
Where are you on food security? Will you be ready when SHTF? Do you have any prepper friends??
Easy, Kitten is the second story in the Within the Walls series, which is about a supernatural community. They’ve bought land and houses and have a wall that separates them from the evil humans. For years, they’ve interacted with the humans just fine. The local bar is run by vampires, and the trucker’s stop is run by a jaguar shifter, and so on.
Then the economy took a turn for the worse, and now the humans are blaming the supernaturals. There have always been a few people thinking no one should have to talk to a werewolf unless they want to, but now laws are put in place to make life harder for everyone who isn’t human.
Chaton is an ocelot shifter who can’t shift. He has a giant garden together with his friend Rue (Who you meet in Vampire Food), and together they try to grow as much food as they possibly can to feed the community.
The problem is that winter is coming. Right now, there might be an abundance, but what will they eat when nothing grows, and the garden is covered in snow?
They need to preserve things, of course.
Chaton does his best to put up jars of jam and jelly. But jam and jelly can’t feed ninety-two people, which is the number of inhabitants in the community at the time.
Do you have a garden? Do you know how to can things? If you couldn’t go to a store, how long would you last? What would you do? That’s what the community members need to figure out.
In my house, we’d have to live on jams and jellies LOL. I have a garden, but I also have chickens who are sneaky little dinosaurs, and I swear, they eat more from the garden than I do. I do, however, preserve a good amount of jam and jellies.
I recommend that you read Vampire Food before you read Easy, Kitten. Every story is about a new couple, but there is so much going on around the community you should know about. And I’m currently working on book four in this series. The third story, The Jaguar’s Knife, will be out in October, and if everything goes according to plan, the fourth story, which is yet to be named, will be out in November.
So if you’re in the mood for vampires and shifters and the occasional magic user working together to solve problems, and catch a bad guy now and then, then let me introduce you to Myrfolk, the town where the supernaturals live Within the Walls.
Easy, Kitten
by Holly Day
SERIES: Within the Walls (Book 2 – Shared Universe)
PUBLISHER: JMS Books
RELEASE DAY: August 3, 2024
GENRE: Gay Paranormal Spicy Romance
TROPES: Survival, Vampire, Ocelot Shifter, Blood Slave, Traumatic Past, Do Worm Shifters Exist?
LENGTH: Novel / 58,413 Words / 220 Pages
HEAT RATING: 4 Flames
🛒 Purchase Links
Blurb
Sequel to Vampire Food
A former blood slave. A talkative vampire. Dreams about canned goods.
Chaton Roux was rescued from a blood bar and taken to a gated community of supernaturals. For two years, he’s kept his head down and done his best to avoid people. The only time he finds peace is when he’s in the garden he shares with his best friend. They’re doing their best to grow as many vegetables as possible since the community is on the verge of starving.
Asher Blackmore knows he should keep his distance, but there is something about Chaton that always makes him want to push for more. Things would’ve been easier if he’d been a mayfly shifter, then he wouldn’t have a mouth and wouldn’t say stupid things all the time.
When the community’s business goes up in flames, the threat of starvation becomes all the more real, and Chaton does his best to come up with ways to preserve food to last them through winter. It’s hard labor, but what better way to deal with a chatty vampire than to drag him into the kitchen and put him to work?
Excerpt
Asher studied the first potato leaves peeking through the soil. It had been close to three weeks, and he hadn’t seen so much as a glimpse of Chaton. Rue had been by a few times to sprinkle the plants with liquid gold, but no hissy kitten in tow.
Now he had a reason to see him, though. Grinning to himself, he stepped out of the garden and crossed the square. It was still early morning, but he believed Chaton would be up. Asher had seen him in the garden most hours of the day and sometimes in the middle of the night.
Someone should make sure he slept.
The road was empty, but it wasn’t unusual for the western parts of the community. The houses here were bigger, as were the gardens, and fewer people lived here. Most wanted to be close to their species, and therefore chose the more densely populated areas, but Jasper lived here, as did the blood slaves. Rue lived with Noah now, and Zeeve had his own house right in the middle of Wolf Street. It wasn’t officially named Wolf Street, but there was a road in the eastern part where only wolves lived.
He slowed his steps as he neared Chaton’s house. There were plants everywhere, and he suspected they’d soon tip over to when there was an abundance. In the garden, not necessary within the walls.
He spotted Chaton at the edge of the garden with his back to him, picking something. Opening the gate, he stepped into the green oasis and walked closer. “Morning.”
Chaton jumped and whipped his head around. When he spotted Asher, he pressed his lips together. “Did Orsa give you the basket back?”
“Jasper, but yeah, I got it back. What are you doing?”
Chaton gestured at the… broad beans? Fava beans? Asher didn’t know much about veggies.
“We’re picking them?” They looked weird, jutting out from the plant like thick, green fingers. Or dicks if he was being childish, which he was. He grinned, but it only resulted in Chaton frowning at him.
“I’m picking them.”
“Great! The entire row?” He realized there were several rows as soon as the words were out of his mouth.
“The entire garden bed.” Chaton picked one and dropped it in a basket by his feet.
Asher reached for one and dropped it in the basket too. “All of them?”
Shaking his head, Chaton pointed at a smaller one. “Not when they look like that. If you’re uncertain if it’s done, squeeze the pod a little to make sure it’s not spongy. You want it firmer, to feel full.”
“Baby, you always say the best things.”
Chaton gave him an unimpressed look which had Asher grinning.
“How full do you want—”
“Pick them or leave.”
Asher winked at him. “Yes, sir.”
He picked a few beans, squeezed them, and realized there was a difference. “How long before the others are ripe?”
“Hopefully not long. Normally, it could be a couple of weeks, but Rue makes everything go a little faster. I’d hoped we could pull them up and leave room for tomatoes.” He gestured toward the patio which was filled with pots. “They need to be put into the soil. We have a few rows in the backyard, but—” He sighed. “Rue found some cool varieties.”
Asher glanced at him. “And it’s a problem?”
“Nope, no problem. He’s happy.”
“Are you happy?”
Chaton snorted.
“About the tomatoes? Are you happy about the tomatoes?”
Chaton shrugged. “It’s hard to plan a garden when you’re working with Rue. Most often, it’s not a problem, since his magic makes up for lack of space, but he sees something, black tomatoes in this case, and he gets all excited. And it’s cool. Black tomatoes sound awesome, as did the pear-shaped tomatoes, the striped tomatoes, and the green tomatoes, but we need to grow as much as we possibly can. We should look for high-yielding varieties, maximize.”
“But diversity is important.”
“You’re right. I’m just frustrated.”
An innuendo was on his tongue, but he bit it back. Chaton wasn’t normally this chatty, and he shouldn’t ruin it by being… him. “Why are you frustrated?”
About the Author
According to Holly Day, no day should go by uncelebrated and all of them deserve a story. If she’ll have the time to write them remains to be seen. She lives in rural Sweden with a husband, four children, more pets than most, and wouldn’t last a day without coffee.
Holly gets up at the crack of dawn most days of the week to write gay romance stories. She believes in equality in fiction and in real life. Diversity matters. Representation matters. Visibility matters. We can change the world one story at the time.
