Denise Weeks

Denise Weeks has published several e-books with Smashwords.

Three books are now available on Amazon.com for the Kindle and on BarnesandNoble.com for the Nook, as well as on Smashwords in other e-formats. Please feel free to contact her with questions and comments.

Little Rituals at Smashwords

Daphne Dilbeck's life is ruled by little rituals. She doesn't remember when or how she invented them; she doesn't always rationally believe they work. (Like blowing a kiss for luck when she sees a black cat.) When everything starts going wrong, Daphne is at a loss until her superstitious friend Snow suggests that she has somehow hexed herself by botching one of her lucky rituals. She's had at least one hallucination (from discontinuing a mood-elevating drug--or so she hopes); her boyfriend has dumped her, and she has just lost an important document. Could Snow be right about the jinx or hex? If she is, how can Daphne fix it?
As Daphne attempts to restore her luck by chanting incantations she finds on the Internet, burning candles as advised by a New Age store, and even visiting a Mexican witch's "circle," things worsen. Her ex swears out a restraining order against her, and opportunities evaporate like soap bubbles. Events snowball until even Daphne's best ritual can't extricate her.
Are there such things as hexes, or can one make one's own luck? Is her mother right when she says Daphne just has mild OCD, and most of this is in her imagination? Daphne's investigation into the nature of luck runs parallel to her personal search for meaning and her journey from being someone who blames "bad luck" for her problems to being someone who takes responsibility for what happens to her, even if the only thing she can do is bend her head against the ill wind and trim the sails to change course. The romantic subplot steams up a few pages, but this isn't strictly a romance; it's a sort of "coming-of-age" novel for a grown-up--although it isn't about an initiation into sex. It's all about growing up at age thirty, with a little help from true friends.
The novel is not exclusively a paranormal, because it is left up to the reader as to whether the events that seem "magical" or mystical are "real" (for certain values of "real") or simply coincidences colored by the main character's compulsions, superstitions, and beliefs. It is more properly literary women's fiction, like Alice Hoffman's _PRACTICAL MAGIC_ or _CHARMS FOR THE EASY LIFE_ by Kaye Gibbons. Fans of TV's "Monk" will appreciate the portrayal of a compulsive, superstitious personality. And anyone who wants a happy ending has come to the right novel.

Camille's Travels at Smashwords

Camille MacTavish is a seventeen-year-old runaway escaping an abusive home life with a stolen magic dragon in the pocket of her jeans. The trinket isn't a luckpiece as she thinks, but is the protrusion into this dimension of a powerful magical entity from another plane of existence. She took it after hitching a ride with Philip, a sorcerer who sets out to track her down, retrieve it, and kill her (thereby gaining power through sacrificing her to his personal demons.) Once she realizes what's happening, Camille begins running for her life. The magic she unwittingly wields but cannot control is evil, and the battle becomes far larger and more perilous. Camille and the friends she has made on the road (and at the Renaissance festival where she found work) must defeat the dark forces quickly to prevent a rending of the very fabric of space-time.
This is a crossover YA/adult dark urban fantasy that's grittily realistic about runaway life on the road, with a touch of the supernatural/paranormal.

Murder by the Marfa Lights (An Ariadne French Mystery) at Smashwords

Ariadne French had waited almost a year to hear from her boyfriend Aaron, who'd left with her trailer to find his fortune out West. Instead, a call came to say he'd just died in Marfa, Texas--and left her all his worldly goods. On the heels of the loss of her sister Zöe's young son, this is too much. Ari travels to Marfa to help settle the estate--and investigate Aaron's death. She finds herself in an exotic world of religious cults, a shady minister, a mystic Cherokee lawyer, a sly musician, cryptographic software, and Aaron's eccentric family, complete with crazy sister. After enduring everything from a chase through the desert by the Marfa Mystery Lights to some very real death threats from Aaron's erstwhile heirs, Ari finds herself recruiting Zöe to help her solve the ultimate mystery: why Aaron was killed, and who killed him.
This is a soft-boiled traditional mystery with a touch of the supernatural and humor in the vein of Joan Hess, Donna Andrews, and the late Anne George's Southern Sisters mysteries.

With any luck, print versions may soon become available!

If you have read one of the e-books, please consider posting a review on Amazon or BarnesandNoble.com!
To contact Denise by e-mail: contact author