Hungry Business: A Short Story
by Maria DeBlassie
~~~~~~~~~~~~~
GENRE: Gothic, Horror (Cozy)
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BLURB:
From the multi-award-winning author of
Everyday Enchantments: Musings on Ordinary Magic & Daily Conjurings comes a
cozy Gothic short story about searching for connection in a world that's
forgotten the power of everyday magic.
Looking for love can be deadly...
You know how it goes. You go
out, hoping to meet someone. You wade
through your fair share of brainless automatons, lifeless bodies, and ravenous
undead good at passing as human.
The more you go out, the less hope you feel and the colder your body
gets. But you keep at it. All you need is one beating heart to match
your own before yours stops pumping altogether.
How hard can it be to find one living, breathing human in a city full of
bodies?
Dating.
It's hungry business.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Excerpt:
The things you do for love.
Like talking yourself into thinking that the lifeless body
across the table from you has his own kind of charm. Surely his gray pallor is
only a trick of the light. His skeletal
frame might even be considered athletic.
You try not to look at his chipped and bloodied fingernails as you force
down your mediocre steak tartar. Sadly,
that room temperature appetizer will be the hottest thing on the menu
tonight.
Maria DeBlassie
Returning to Soulful Living
In my cozy Gothic short story, Hungry Business, we have a protagonist
who is searching for love and meaningful connection. She’s got a lot of heart and a lot of
hope. But as her dates go from bad to
worse, she’s stuck with the horrible fear that she is destined to be
alone. Of course, things are complicated
by the fact that she is living through a supernatural pandemic.
The conflict in the outside world kicks off her personal crisis,
as she struggles to stay true to herself in
a world that wants her numb and soulless.
But where there’s hope, there’s magic, something my protagonist learns by the end of the
story. In order for her to
get her heart’s desire in a world where a living, beating human heart is a hot
commodity, she has to get real, go deep, and reject the status quo that’s
leaving her feeling so numb and empty.
Much like the pandemic we’re living through now, the supernatural
one in this story makes people feel isolated, disconnected from themselves and
others. That feeling causes panic! People get restless, nervous, start jumping
out of their skin to pretend like everything is normal, like it used to be,
when really, everything has changed.
They’d rather risk infection than pull back, pull in, and take this time
to nourish the soul.
In reality, we should let things change. Pre-pandemic life included too much busy, too
much mindless consumption, and too much exploitation of our natural resources,
not to mention terrible strife and oppression.
That’s not the kind of world we should return to. This is the time to let the world reset
itself. A time to return to soulful
living and let go of everything that wasn’t working prior to this.
It can be scary to pull in and to pull away from the mindless
collective. Scary to find yourself. That’s what makes Hungry Business a Gothic tale! But there’s also hope. Like in any good Gothic story, the damsel in
distress in this one discovers that what she finds most terrifying is the
unknown. It’s not the zombie apocalypse,
nor the very real issue of turning into a lifeless being. Her fear—the thing we all secretly fear—is
facing our own depths.
Times like these invite us to get real about who we are, what we
want, and what we’re willing to do to get it.
Those truths are raw, pushing back against mainstream culture’s
insistence that we must always be out, loud, surrounded by people. That’s what makes pulling back from the outer
world so scary: In the silence and stillness, we discover the unfathomable
depths of ourselves and reconnect to soul.
It’s the sublime, at once beautiful and terrifying with its
awesomeness.
I love writing cozy Gothic stories. The Gothic
genre is all about facing the darkness so that we can find the light. So maybe take a line from the protagonist in Hungry Business
and settle in, put on a pot of tea, turn on those twinkle lights, and sink into
some soul-nourishing stories that heal and inspire.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~
AUTHOR Bio and Links:
Maria
DeBlassie, Ph.D. is a native New Mexican mestiza blogger, award-winning writer,
and award-winning educator living in the Land of Enchantment. Her first book,
Everyday Enchantments: Musings on Ordinary Magic & Daily Conjurings (Moon
Books 2018), and her ongoing blog, Enchantment Learning & Living are about
everyday magic, ordinary gothic, and the life of a kitchen witch. When she is
not practicing her own brand of brujeria, she’s reading, teaching, and writing
about bodice rippers and things that go bump in the night. She is forever looking for magic in her life
and somehow always finding more than she thought was there. Find out more about
Maria and conjuring everyday magic at www.mariadeblassie.com.
Social Media
Links:
https://linktr.ee/mdeblassie
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC7rY-gLkSH-w8uuVyrhVALA
https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/17535853.Maria_DeBlassie
https://www.facebook.com/EnchantmentLL
https://twitter.com/EnchantmentLL
https://www.pinterest.com/mdeblassieell
The book is $0.99 during the
tour
Amazon buy
link: https://www.amazon.com/Hungry-Business-Short-Maria-DeBlassie-ebook/dp/B08L48MVHD
Thanks for hosting!
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