Authors: Faith Hunter

Cat Tales

BOOK: Cat Tales

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CAT TALES

Faith Hunter

New American Library

Published by New American Library, a division of

Penguin Group (USA) Inc., 375 Hudson Street,

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ISBN: 978-1-101-53683-4

Printed in the United States of America

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PUBLISHER’S NOTE

These are works of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

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A NOTE TO READERS

Hi Everyone,

It isn’t often a writer gets to talk directly to her readers—except at cons and book signings—and then the personal contact is short-lived. So I wanted to take an opportunity to share with y’all my thoughts about the Skinwalker series, and about Jane Yellowrock, Beast, Rick, Bruiser, and Leo.

When I started out to write the series, I wanted a character who had no past, with seemingly only the future open to her. I wanted a character who was a bit repressed socially, sexually, and emotionally. I wanted a character who was a singularity—the only one of her kind in the world. I wanted a loner in the truest sense of the word.

When Jane was born, I was sitting in a Starbucks with my friend and fellow writer Kim Harrison. We’d both had tiring weeks, with a lot of detail-oriented stuff and not a lot of downtime. And certainly no creative time. To clear our heads, we started talking about the new, innovative characters and worlds that lived in the backs of our creative brains, things and people who hadn’t yet made it to pen and paper or computer file. We call them new shinies, and they call to us like shiny things on the ground, spotted by a crow in flight—something we simply have to check out.

Kim was talking about a character and magic system that were . . . well, that’s her story, and maybe she’ll share it as a short story or a book someday. But let me say—it was exciting!

When she was done, she said, “What are you working on in the back of your brain?”

I was staring at ck the far wall, fairly engrossed in the paint job, I suppose. I took a sip of my tea and said, “I keep thinking about this line: ‘Katie’s Ladies, the oldest continually operating whorehouse in New Orleans.’”

Kim said, “Go with it.” And I did, for something like twenty minutes. In that visit, Jane Yellowrock—at that time, called Jane Doe—was born.

Shortly after, I had tea at that same Starbucks with Misty Massey (author of
Mad Kestrel
), and again we were talking about new shinies. I told her about my character. Misty encouraged me to expand on my theme, and I did. Jane “Yellowrock” Doe took on form and substance, and developed a history. She came alive. And so did the Beast within her, which had to be weird for anyone who might have been listening in! During that afternoon tea, Jane Yellowrock became an opportunity for me to discover my Cherokee roots—something that had been hidden from me, that I never knew I had.

Back in the day, people kept their racial heritage to themselves—not necessarily because of shame, but because our society made living with mixed racial genetics difficult. To my great delight, I had recently discovered that I was not lily-white, but rather a wondrous mix of nearly one-fourth Cherokee and Choctaw, English (tracing my roots back to an ancestor who came to England with William the Conqueror in 1066), African-American, with a complex mixture of Irish, Germanic, and other European bloodlines. I was a mongrel! What fun! And so Jane became of mixed ethnicity: a Cherokee skinwalker.

This fabulous character had to be way taller than I am, so instantly she was six feet, with long black hair and coppery skin and—the one thing that sets her apart—amber-yellow eyes, like a mountain lion’s eyes. Her Cherokee name had to be unusual even for her culture, had to be about her eyes. Dalonige’i Digadoli. Yellow-Eyes Yellowrock.

And her Beast—well, Beast was a difficult character to write. She still is. Beast is a predator, a carnivore—she kills and eats animals. She’s a very bloody, earthy creature! From Jane, Beast gained an understanding of language, a usage that slips and slides and changes, just like the language skills of a human learning a new tongue late in life. She has memories that she keeps from Jane, skills and abilities that she keeps from Jane, and perhaps Beast has a magic of her own, which Jane is beginning to recognize even if she doesn’t understand it.

I promised a mention of the men in Jane’s life. Rick—oh my gosh. Rick. Black haired, black eyed, six feet even, and gorgeous. A man brought up Catholic, educated in Catholic schools, with a high-society family and a proper Creole background, all the way back to the mid–seventeen hundreds. But Rick was a player at the time he entered Jane’s life, and full of secrets, almost as many as Jane had herself. And perhaps after all it was the secrets that brought them together. We’ll see. . . .

Bruiser. George Dumas. Now that is a man! He stands six feet four inches tall and has a butt that makes women salivate. Brown haired and brown eyed, he can dance better tha>

Ahhh, Leo. Leonard Eugène Zacharie Pellissier was the nephew of and turned by Amaury Pellissier, the blood-master to Clan Pellissier before the previous vamp war. Amaury was killed by Bruiser’s mother, which left Leo as the blood-master of most of the southeastern U.S. Leo is a strategist, using the people around him as pieces in an everlasting game of chess. To him, Jane is desirable, lovely, and enigmatic. He may want her in his bed and in his life, and her blood in his fangs, and he may see her as a queen on the chessboard, but she is still expendable. The one great love in Leo’s life is power. And that love may well be his downfall.

The world of Jane Yellowrock has grown since that first day of discovery. It’s now weird and intense and wonderful and convoluted! And I totally love it.

It is even more wonderful to have friends like Kim and Misty, who let me be creative, no matter how strange the stuff in my head sounds! I am vastly thankful to them both, and to you. Thank you for making Jane the success she has become. That part of Jane Yellowrock is all because of you.

Included herein are four short stories featuring Jane Yellowrock and characters from the skinwalker world. Three were on my Web site for a very short time, way back when. One is brand new. Some take place before “Signatures of the Dead,” the short story that opens the series in the anthology
Strange Brew
. One is set just after the end of
Mercy Blade
. I mean seconds after! In that story, Jane is a secondary character. We get to see her through the eyes of someone else—which was such fun to write! As the writer of a first-person point of view series, I sometimes find it difficult to see Jane as the supporting characters in her life must. Inside she’s a mushy, tender-hearted woman, trying not to be tortured by her forgotten past. Outside, to others, she’s something fearful and intriguing, a powerful, vibrant, mysterious woman.

I have also put in a timeline of the series and some clan information. Most important, there is the opening to
Raven Cursed
, which will be out in January. Soon!

I hope you enjoy them all. I thank you for being fans of Jane and Beast.

Faith

A
CKNOWLEDGMENTS

A lot of work goes into making a book, even a short book of short stories. I want to thank my publisher, Rong ec, for taking a chance on shorts set in Jane’s world. They made a pretty package. To my editor, Jessica Wade, many thanks for fighting for it!

Many thanks to TheAuthorPro.com for all the work they are putting into making Jane Yellowrock a household name! They want to see my sci-fi/fantasy books on bookshelves everywhere. I am so happy to have you on my team!

I want to thank Adonna Pruette for the amazing photos, and Mike Pruette for the fantastic artwork and graphics that became this cover. An especial thank-you goes out to Alison Boulton, the cover model who is quickly becoming the face of Jane Yellowrock on Facebook. Girl—you
rock
!

Last, a very special thanks goes out to my agent, Lucienne Diver, of the Knight Agency. Thank you for keeping my career on track. I know it’s hard with this crazy woman behind the wheel, but you are stellar. Simply stellar.