As a Scrivener and a Seer, Dixon and Yuri possess many talents. Baking is not one of them.
But when a mysterious malady grips Yuri, the two of them must bargain, bluff, and bake their way through Pinyin Bay to find a cure.
Dixon is none too confident in the kitchen, but he'll stop at nothing if it means finding a cure for his grown man friend. Even if that means getting his hands dirty in the flour bin.
Yuri, naturally, makes a terrible patient, and their home remedy attempts are half-baked at best. Can he dredge up the patience to figure out what lies behind his bizarre affliction?
The ABCs of Spellcraft is a series filled with bad jokes and good magic, where M/M romance meets paranormal cozy. A perky hero, a brooding love interest, and delightfully twisty-turny stories that never end up quite where you'd expect.
When I first started The ABCs of Spellcraft I knew right away it was going to be special. Dixon and Yuri are just plain fun! What I didn't expect was it to be one of my favorite series and I definitely look forward to their new adventures.
Speaking of their adventures, Brownie Points starts a new story arc in their journey and it's wonderful. The blending of magic, mystery, humor, family, friendship, and love is pure reading gold. I won't go into too many details but with spellcrafts possibly going wonky, Yuri's skin reaction, Dixon's desire to unravel the cause, and of course Dixon's family . . . well Jordan Castillo Price brings an all around great package to the party.
I've said all along that ABCs of Spellcraft remind me of the old movie serials of the 30s and 40s my parents collect as well as the audiobook versions having a quality of the old radio shows that I collect of the same era. This still rings true for me but it also combines the magical humor of Bewitched and the zany madcappery(and yes I know that's not a real word but I think it's very Dixon-ish) of I Love Lucy but also a hint of The Thin Man's Nick and Nora Charles chemistry between Dixon and Yuri as they trace their way around the spellcraft maze of what went wrong and who wrote what.
If you are new to this Spellcraft universe Jordan Castillo Price has created and wondering if you need to start at the beginning, my answer is "yes". Each arc ties up nicely and each entry has it's own little mysterious wonky-ness going on but if for no other reason than to watch Dixon and Yuri's journey evolve, I can't imagine not reading this series as it was written. The author calls it "cozy paranormal", I didn't even know that was a thing until I discovered this series but however you define it, I call it entertaining that sucked me from the getgo and left me hungering for more.
RATING:
1
Dixon
My mother always says, show me a person who doesn’t like free stuff, and I’ll show you a big, fat liar. Me, personally? I love a good freebie. Absolutely adore them. And so the annual Shop the Bay trade show was my favorite event of the year.
Shop the Bay was not a public event. It was only open to retail stores looking for wholesale goods. But Practical Penn was a retail store… technically. Maybe my office in the back of the shop was more of a repository for loud amphibians, and maybe the last work Yuri did was change a lightbulb no one else could reach, but Yuri and I were Practical Penn employees.
Technically.
And that was good enough for me.
The Bayside Convention Center stretched out before us like a glimmering sea of possibility. While it’s true that the giveaways were all printed with some random business logo, most of the time you could scrape it off… or at least put a sticker over it. There were key fobs. There were water bottles. There were squishy little foam balls that purportedly provide some sort of stress relief. But best of all… there were pens.
You might think that a guy who’s trained his whole life to wield a specialized writing implement— a magical hand-cut quill— would turn his nose up at a cheap, disposable pen. But I love making marks on paper, whether or not those marks harness the power of Spellcraft. And it’s always fun to put a new pen through its paces and really see what it can do. I’d managed to gather up every pen in sight, from felt tip to ballpoint.
Yuri, meanwhile, appeared to be in the market for things like emery boards and back-scratchers and dinky little magnetic calendars with dates so small you could barely see them. Yuri has the predilections of someone at least two and a half times his age. Whether this was the result of growing up in Russia or his natural bent of personality, I couldn’t say. I just knew it was adorable.
We’d drifted apart— me to a table with pens that had multicolored ink, Yuri to a podiatrist’s booth. It was getting late. My pockets bristled with so many pens that my pants gave off a plasticky brreeeet with every step I took, and we’d still need to figure out what to do for dinner. Yes, there was still some take-and-bake pizza in the fridge. But after a couple of days, those slices are more like a doorstop than a dinner. Speaking of which….
“Say, Yuri.” I sidled up to him so I didn’t have to shout over the crowd and pitched my voice flirtily. “Is that a doorstop in your pocket, or are you just happy to see me?”
He blinked. “It is promotional doorstop.”
Such a cutie.
I was about to nudge Yuri toward the parking lot when he suddenly stiffened. Not in a doorstop kind of way, either. More like a predator with something vulnerable and tasty in its sights. I tried to follow his gaze as best I could, but saw nothing but the backs of a bunch of heads. I went up on tiptoe and still saw nothing. I was about to give up and ask, when the crowd parted and it hit me: the alluring smell of chocolate.
I don’t have a major sweet tooth— not like Yuri— but the smell was so enticing, so good, I half-expected it to turn into a cartoon hand beckoning us forward. We weren’t the only ones to notice. While the Shop the Bay was thinning out and some of the vendors were even starting to pack up for the day, the crowd around Bruno’s Brownies was more of a mob scene.
But crowds have a way of making room for Yuri. Often punctuated by sort of “oof” sound you’d make when an elbow connected with your ribs.
As we elbowed our way toward the front, I found a big brute of guy hacking a sheet of brownies into cubes and dealing them onto tiny paper plates. He wore an apron embroidered with the name Bruno— a normal-sized apron, I presume, but on his burly frame it looked more like a front-facing thong. Not only did he have the physique of a grizzly prepping for hibernation, but he was just as hirsute. I come from a long line of hairy guys— though I’m told I’m more of an otter than a bear cub— and even I was impressed by Bruno’s follicles. Chest hair bulged from the neck of his shirt. His forearm hair was more of a pelt. His beard was thick enough to merit its own hairnet. But despite all his fur, the thing that struck me the most about Bruno was his eyes. Small and sweet, blinking as though he’d just woken up from a long winter’s nap… and completely overwhelmed by the bloodthirsty mob demanding his treats.
“One per customer,” the frazzled baker entreated, though if anyone heeded his pleas, it was only because they were shoved out of the way before they could help themselves to seconds.
As fast as Bruno could put those brownie samples out, they disappeared. And when a voice over the loudspeakers announced that Shop the Bay would be closing in ten minutes, the mob grew even more frantic.
At his side, a tiny woman in a chef coat two sizes too big was doling out the paper plates as fast as he could fill them. Her blondish hair was in a sloppy ponytail on top of her head, though maybe it had started the day more contained and just ended up looking messy. Despite the fact that she came off like a kid playing dress-up, she had the cheerful confidence of an adult as she worked the crowd. “Bruno’s brownies are made only from the finest ingredients, from fair-trade chocolate, to organic flour, to locally sourced cream, butter and honey. Your customers will really taste the difference!”
Maybe so… if you could manage to get your hands on one.
The brownies were going alarmingly fast, and the people within reach of Yuri’s elbows were falling like bowling pins. But when a girl of about seven or eight popped up in front of him, Yuri somehow stayed his elbow mid-jab. The kid was clearly into the color pink. Little pink T-shirt. Little pink baseball cap. Little pink jeans with a glitzy silver belt. And a little pink tongue that poked out at Yuri as she snatched up the last brownie and darted away, blowing raspberries. “Better luck next time, Chubby!”
“You’re better off without the brownies, if you ask me,” declared a desperate voice from over my shoulder. “Sweets are terrible for your blood sugar and your teeth.”
I turned and found a tall beanpole of a guy watching the crowd cruise past his stall. His shop was Herb’s Herbs and Veggies, according to the big, pumpkin-shaped sign. Why was it that only the second H was silent? Unless Yuri was pronouncing the word… but he’d picked up a lot of his pronunciation from British TV. Anyway, Herb still had plenty of samples to give away— but no takers. And now that he’d caught my eye, he seemed really invested in engaging my attention.
Herb was a middle-aged guy with a long, wispy ponytail and a tie-dyed shirt. But he wasn’t one of those relaxed hippies you see sprawled in the corner of a coffee shop nursing a single soy latte. He was the sort who’d earnestly thrust a clipboard in your face to get you to sign a petition for some cause or another.
And in this case, the cause was produce.
“Most people know tomatoes are actually a fruit,” he informed me, “but did you know their classification as a vegetable was for taxation purposes? As if something as glorious as a plant can be governed!”
“Er… can’t say that I did.”
“Did you know that in the seventeenth century, carrots were originally purple, but were bred to be orange?”
“Oh. How about that?”
“And did you know the apples you buy in the supermarket can be as much as a year old?” Don’t get me wrong— I love it when someone’s passionate about advocating for their cause. I’ve just never found vegetables particularly appealing unless they were covered in a bright orange blanket of cheese.
“Fascinating…” I started edging away. “But, wow, would you look at the time?”
The thing about tall people is that they take really big strides on their long, gangly legs, and before I could blend back into the brownie hubbub, Herb was shoving a little paper cup into my hand. A cup filled with something that looked suspiciously like wood chips.
“Herb’s herbs and veggies are grown right here in Pinyin Bay, not shipped from halfway across the world. I use a special, year-round hydroponic growing system I developed myself. And they’re preserved using time-tested, all-natural methods like brine and fermentation and sunshine. Don’t settle for anything less!”
“Indeed I won’t,” I assured him brightly, then dodged around a chubby guy with brownie residue clinging to the corners of his mouth, and finally made my getaway.
The mob was only just starting to thin, but Yuri’s shaved head is easy to spot. I checked in with him to see if the brownie folks had put out more product while I was being waylaid by Herb, but unfortunately, Bruno and his bubbly assistant were packing up shop with no more brownie samples to be had. It looked like we were out of luck— at least until I noticed a smug-looking guy threading through the crowd in the opposite direction, holding not one tiny paper plate aloft, but two.
No fair!
Instinctively, I called out, “Say, is that the Pinyin Bay Perch?” When Two-Brownie Guy paused to look, I made a grab. Thanks to my otter-like reflexes, I came away with half of his ill-gotten gains… and left a cup of dried veggie chips in its place.
The brownie was halfway to my mouth when I turned back and saw Yuri gazing forlornly at the now-empty brownie table. As good as the goodie might smell (and it smelled really good) I could hardly keep it for myself. Shielding my prize with my body, I sidled up to Yuri, jostled him playfully with my shoulder, and said, “Gee, what a shame we didn’t find this booth sooner. And now the samples are all gone.” I waggled my eyebrows at him and whipped out the brownie cube with a flourish. “All except… this one!”
It was a big one, too.
Yuri’s expression transformed from disappointment to glee— well, as close to glee as Yuri gets, but by now I can read him pretty darn well. He snatched the brownie from my hand as if it might disappear and shoved it in his mouth. But just as he was about to bite down, he said, “Should we split it?” That’s what I understood through the brownie and the sexy Russian accent, anyhow.
I patted Yuri on his bulging bicep. That handsome hunk of man-meat has had a hard life. He’s guarded and suspicious and even a tad bit pessimistic, and I think that’s what makes it especially satisfying to see him really enjoy himself. Even outside the bedroom. “You eat the whole thing, Yuri. I’m sure it can’t be any sweeter than watching you enjoy it.”
That declaration brought a blush to Yuri’s cheeks… but he wasn’t too embarrassed to scarf down the entire brownie in two bites.
Satisfied, I turned to the table. There was nothing left but a few crumbs, a scattering a paper plates… and a business card.
Bruno’s Brownerie
Bruno Baer, Proprietor
Wholesale Orders Only
I tucked the card into my pocket, wheels turning. “My parents’ shop might not be in food service, but the strip mall is zoned for restaurants— Practical Penn even shares an entire wall with the pizza place— so technically, we should be able to place a wholesale order. How many brownies do you suppose that would entail? A gross? Isn’t that a funny unit of measurement, considering that those brownies are anything but gross? I wonder how it came to be that the word for ‘twelve dozen’ and ‘completely disgusting’ is the same— probably a major case of buyer’s remorse was at the root of it. And how confusing is it for you when English words have two entirely different meanings?”
“Everything about your language is confusing,” Yuri said, though the words weren’t as harsh as they might have been, given that they were thick with brownie. His cheeks went an even brighter red.
I could count the number of times I’ve made Yuri blush on one hand and still have enough fingers leftover for tiddlywinks, so I really did my best not to stare, so as not to make him feel too self-conscious. And yet, the sight of him looking all flushed sent my thoughts spiraling down a much more lascivious route. I gave his massive arm another firm pat, then went up on tiptoe and purred in his ear, “Homophones might be confusing, but I know a vocabulary that the two of us speak loud and clear.” I took Yuri’s face in both hands (with the intent of adding the word “naked” to avoid any potential ambiguity) when I realized his cheeks were unnaturally hot to the touch.
And even as I watched, the blush resolved itself into two clusters of bright red spots.
Author Bio:
Author and artist Jordan Castillo Price is the owner of JCP Books LLC. Her paranormal thrillers are colored by her time in the midwest, from inner city Chicago, to small town Wisconsin, to liberal Madison.
Jordan is best known as the author of the PsyCop series, an unfolding tale of paranormal mystery and suspense starring Victor Bayne, a gay medium who's plagued by ghostly visitations. Also check out her new series, Mnevermind, where memories are made...one client at a time.
With her education in fine arts and practical experience as a graphic designer, Jordan set out to create high quality ebooks with lavish cover art, quality editing and gripping content. The result is JCP Books, offering stories you'll want to read again and again.
SMASHWORDS / LIVEJOURNAL / B&N
EMAILS: jordan@psycop.com
jcp.heat@gmail.com
Brownie Points #9
KOBO / iTUNES / SMASHWORDS
Series
The Complete Collection Volume 2
