Keyan Bowes

In all the kerfuffle about LiveJournal's temporary collapse, I missed blogging about Dayrunner.

It's the third book in my friend Kater Cheek's series set in the imaginary university town of Seabingen. Kit Melbourne has a new job as the vampires' dayrunner. Her job description is to  take care of things that they can't, immobilized as they are during the day, and her boss is the vampire who heads the Guild.

It pays well, and shouldn't be a problem for a resourceful person like Kit. Until she gets mixed up in vampire politics. Then, caught between vampires friendly and hostile, she's trying to save some vampire lives while staking others. Meanwhile, she's defending herself against the curses someone keeps leaving on her doorstep and trying to win back the guy she really loves.

Her only real ally, it sometimes seems, is her familiar Kaa. He's a crow.

As an Urban Fantasy fan, I love these books, which Kater is e-publishing through Smashwords. They're available on Amazon too.

A word about the covers. They look so professional because Kater, who's also an artist, designs them herself. Take a look at the other two again. She's designed each object with the book's name, and then photographed it against a background she's painted. For Dayrunner, she carved the stake and then burned in the name. And here's her description of making the cover for Seeing Things and for Treerunner.

Also - if you every wanted to stake a vampire, here's a practical experiment: "How to Stake a Vampire" -- A Youtube video by Kater.

If you're the kind of reader who enjoys the Sookie Stackhouse books, or Women of the Otherworld, or the Anita Blake series before they became soft porn....

... you have to meet Kit Melbourne.  Part-time barista, freelance florist, serious karate-ka, Kit inherits a jeweled bindi that reveals that her boyfriend is an occasional bear, her best client is a goddess, and many of her clients at her brother's cafe are Otherfolk. The only hitch is that a lot of people, human and otherwise,  know about this jewel, and are ready to kill her for it. All she has to do is find out who they are and how to stay alive.

Kit Melbourne is the heroine of Seeing Things, the first of the "Seabingen" novels by my friend and Clarionmate, Kater Cheek. (Seabingen is the name of the setting, a contemporary University town inspired by Seattle.) I've been one of the lucky early readers of this series, and it rocks.  Kater's decided to e-publish the first three novels.
 
And... the first one, Seeing Things, is up at Smashwords. If you like urban fantasy, and want a fast fun read and a heroine with guts, smarts, and a neat sense of humor... go for it.  It's FREE during the soft-launch period.

Here's the link (in case the other ones don't work and you need one to paste in your browser)
http://www.smashwords.com/books/view/66778