Something Wicked Returns: Bitter Spirits by Jenn Bennett: Guest Post & Giveaway (INT)

Hi everyone!
Something Wicked has been going great so far, right? A huge thank you to all of you for reading the posts, entering the giveaways and leaving your lovely comments.  Today, I am proud to welcome Jenn Bennet, author of one of my very favorite Urban Fantasy series, Arcadia Bell, and the upcoming Roaring Twenties. She's here to tell us a bit about herself and about her new project.  Enjoy Jenn's post and don't forget to enter the giveaway!

    

Most readers know me from Arcadia Bell, which is romantic urban fantasy that is chock-full of magic, demons, and the occasional zombie mermaid. When I receive fan mail about the series, it's usually "I heart Jupe" and, more often, "I love Cady and Lon together!" Well, ask and ye shall receive, because Arcadia #4 has a whole lot of one-on-one Cady and Lon time. But while you wait until it releases in April, I have something to tide you over: a ghostly new paranormal series coming in January that: 1) has a strong, independent heroine with supernatural talent, 2) both Chinese magic and hoodoo, and 3) is all about the chemistry and romance.

BITTER SPIRITS takes place in San Francisco during the late 1920s, and the heroine, Aida, is a traveling spirit medium who performs onstage at speakeasies, reuniting patrons with their long-dead relatives, friends, and lovers. Aida meets the hero of the book—Winter, a sexy brick wall of a Swedish immigrant whose "fishing" business is a cover for bootlegging—after he's been hexed. Someone's opened his eyes to the spirit world and turned him into a magnet for ghosts.

And in a city where 3000 people died in the 1906 earthquake, San Francisco has a lot of ghosts.

Would you like to meet Aida and Winter? Here's a wee peek at their first haunting encounter…

As Aida passed through the room, her breath rushed out in a wintery white puff.
Ghost.
She cautiously approached the main office. The door was cracked. She hesitated and listened to a low jumble of foreign words streaming from the room, spoken in a deep, male voice. Beyond the cloud of cold breath, she saw a woman with traditional Chinese combs in her hair, on which strings of red beads dangled. Bare feet peeked beneath her sheer sleeping gown. She stood behind a very large, dark-headed man wearing a long coat, who stared out a long window that looked down over the main floor of the club.
He was speaking to himself in a low rumble, a repeating string of inaudible words that sounded like a prayer.
Ghosts don’t talk.
“Is she your dance partner?” Aida said.
The man jerked around. My. He was enormous—several inches over six feet and with shoulders broad enough to topple small buildings as he passed. Brown hair, so dark it was almost black, was brilliantined back with a perfect part. Expensive clothes. A long, serious face, one side of which bore a large, curving scar. He blinked at Aida for a moment, gaze zipping up and down the length of her in hurried assessment, then spoke in low voice. “You can see her?”

Jenn Bennett is author of the Arcadia Bell urban fantasy series from Pocket Books and the upcoming Roaring Twenties paranormal romance series from Berkley. Born in Germany, she has a B.F.A. in Painting from Troy University. She’s lived and traveled extensively throughout Europe, the U.S., and the Far East, and currently lives near Atlanta with one husband and two very bad pugs.

Get weekly Facebook updates from Jenn by liking her fan page, or follow her on Twitter for daily dribbles about her current writing projects, the book industry, and miscellaneous obsessions.

Thanks to Jenn's generosity, you can now enter to win one of her Cady Bell books (covers at the beginning of this post) or a pre-order of Bitter Spirits. This giveaway is INTERNATIONAL, anywhere The Book Depository ships. Just fill out the Rafflecopter below and keep your fingers crossed.

Good luck, everyone!

a Rafflecopter giveaway