The Earth Dwellers

Lolita: How does your normal day look like?

Perry: Well, when the sun comes up and turns the sky all red and the clouds all yellow, I usually start with some stretching, reaching for the sky, working the kinks out. Then I do mental jumping jacks, just pretending, trying to get some exercise. It’s almost the same thing as actually doing them, and I swear I would do them if I had legs and well, arms.

What next? Ahh, yes, I drink a smidgen of the water I’ve got stored inside me, just enough to quench my thirst and keep me from drying out and getting too brittle. Nobody likes a brittle prickler! Then, if there are any brambleweeds being blown past by the wind I do my best to catch them on my spikes. You know, like sort of a game. It’s fun. I mean, I can only lean a centimeter or two to either side, but sometimes that makes all the difference.

When I get bored in the afternoon, I usually take to taunting anyone who’s nearby. I’m an avid taunter, did you know that? Of course, I’m sure you do. I pretty much taunted Siena every second of every day she was stuck in that cage of hers, and even when she wasn’t. I tend to taunt those I like the most, so she got a very healthy dose.

As night falls I always watch the sunset, because hey, I got the best seat in the house and who doesn’t like a good sunset?

Nighttime is for listening, and although I’ve got a big mouth, I can listen pretty searin’ good if I put my mind to it. The desert has so much to say at night with creepy-crawly things, well, creeping and crawling and slithering and scurrying. And Cotees howling too, a mournful, eerie sound that makes you shiver in the best way possible.

Lolita: What do you like doing in your free time?

Just having fun mostly. I mean, what else is life about but having fun. So I usually try to keep things exciting by making up new taunts I can use on any passing humans. Or I might scare a passing ’zard with a loud “Argh!” in their face. That always gets me laughing. But really, I don’t have too much free time, what with all the humans passing through to observe. Then it’s my solemn duty to pass any information I get through the mental telepathies of all the other pricklers….Ha! Got you again! I wouldn’t know a prickler on the other side of fire country from a prickler sitting right next to me.

Lolita: Can you tell us something about your first meeting with Siena?

Perry: Well, first of all, you should read her book, Fire Country, because it’ll tell you everything that happened. But if you want to know one thing, it’s that I didn’t mean to prick her with my spikes. I tried to move, I swear it, but my two-centimeter lean wasn’t nearly enough to get out of her way. And when she crashed into me and my spikes got her, I felt awful, terrible really, for maybe five, ten seconds. And then I just thought it was really fu

Lolita: Can you tell us something interesting you have seen happen in the confinement of Fire Country?

Nothing really. These humans are so wooloo, I never know what they’re thinking. They shove people in these cages, which is pure foolishness, because what a waste it is to have perfectly good arms and legs and not be able to use them. That’s why I was really happy for Siena when she used her perfectly good arms and legs to bust out of Confinement, not once, but twice! Impressive, really, although I couldn’t help giving her a hard time about it. A human’s gotta be free and a prickler’s gotta laugh, right?

Lolita: Thanks so much Perry for letting me interview you! I think it was one of the most fun interviews I have ever done !

Perry: Wow, is that it? Is that my fifteen minutes of fame? But I’m not done yet, I have so much more to tell, I just want to say—

***It was at this point that a tugskin was thrown over Perry’s spiky head to convince him it was nighttime and that he should be sleeping. Thankfully, he fell for it and shut the scorch up***

3) A Sneak Peek

BREW

BOOK 1 OF THE WITCHING HOUR

Available anywhere e-books are sold January 16, 2014!

In the black of night,

’Midst shattered dreams,

Come darkest terrors, once unseen.

Hidden amongst us,

Conjuring invisible power,

’Til the wraiths step forward, for the witching hour.

The Witching Hour, Rhett Carter

Chapter One

April 13th, 2031

Midnight

Shrieks and screams tear me from an already forgotten dream. They’re not human—the howls. Well, maybe some are, but certainly not all; and not those which are the closest.

As I sit up sharply, heart leaping forward to sprinting speed, another ear-rending

screeeeeeech!

shatters the night. Metallic. That’s the only way to describe the sound. Like we’re in Oz and the tin man is being ripped in half by impossibly strong hands, reduced to shredded hunks of scrap metal.

Screeeeeeech!

I flinch away from the window, as if it might burst inwards, but no…whatever’s tearing through the metal is outside. At least for now.

Voices from the other room, muffled at first, and then raised, shouted. “Laney! Stay in your room!”

“What’s happening?” my sister cries through her door.

“Just stay inside!” Dad’s booming voice thunders through wood and plasterboard. “Rhett! You too! My gun, Marla!” My adopted father’s told me few stories of the time he spent in military service, but suddenly it’s not difficult to imagine him barking out orders and snapping salutes off like gunshots.

“Take it,” my mother says. There’s a double click—chook-chook!—and my father’s heavy footsteps pound past my room and rumble down the staircase.

Kicking my legs over the side of the bed, I almost trip on the sheets, which are tangled around my ankles like vines. I high step, not unlike ru

Under the glow of the half-moon, the wrought-iron fence around our front yard is shining, mangled and bent and ripped in several places. The gate at the end of the brick path is missing…no, there it is! Two jagged halves lie on opposite sides of the yard. Whatever did that is strong beyond imagination…

There are shadows on the lawn:

The dark echo of the big rosebush, tenderly cared for by my father, whose large hands are surprisingly as dexterous as that of a woman’s as he cuts and prunes it on the weekends; a wheel barrow, still half full of mulch—my responsibility unfulfilled—casts a black spot amongst the lush, green grass; the shadows are moving. Not the roses or the barrow, but others, darker and lurking, creeping toward the front door.

There’s a bright flash of light and the rosebush bursts into flame, its thorny stems painted with chaotic red and orange strokes. Glowing orbs appear in the midst of one of the moving shadows and they’re—they’re—