In anticipation of the December 10 release of THE DARING YOUNG MAN - Mumbo Jumbo Circus Book Two, the first volume in the series, THE MUMBO JUMBO CIRCUS will be ON SALE for the surprising sum of 99 CENTS from now through the end of December.

If you were thinking of reading it and haven't yet, now is a really good time! 

(Purchase links are in the sidebar.)

And then on December 10, continue the fun with THE DARING YOUNG MAN.

Once, sixteen year-old Dante Delgado dreamed of being one of the few trapecistas able to do a quadruple somersault in the air. Then a tragic accident took his parents, their circus, and his ability to fly. 

Circus is one big family all over the world, and Dante hates everything to do with it.

But to survive, he must choose between joining the ranks of the tiny yet magical Mumbo Jumbo Circus or its nemesis, the Las Vegas spectacular, Cirque Patron. And it doesn't help that two very different girls are confusing the situation. 

If he makes the wrong choice, he won't have a future to worry about.

A pivotal scene in my soon-to-be released (12/10) title, The Daring Young Man, takes place during Dia de los Muertos in Tzintzuntzan, Michoacan, Mexico.
I am fortunate to have a friend who hails from nearby Uruapan. He has been helping me with details and both the Spanish and Purepecha words in the book. He recently posted these pics to my Facebook wall. I wanted to share them with you.

"In colloquial language, we call death, La Calaca, the bony siriquisiaca death, the friend who does not discriminate. His prescence is always associated with the eternal feminine as well as the symbol of life is associated with the feminine. Usually the image of death is only a skeleton covered with a mantle and wielding a scythe in his hand. But in November during the festival of the dead, his image becomes festive, funny, smart or sophisticated, droll, grotesque image of politicians, Rulers and institutions. There is a town in Michoacan called Capula. the people are masters of the art of modeling clay. They produce images of death each year modeled in clay of the region and decorated with great imagination. All those little mud fihuras are popular with the population but perhaps the most popular of all are The catrinas. These figurines are elegantly dressed and death somehow glamorous. Yesterday in Morelia Capula artisans presented their annual exibition Capula skulls."

My teen daughter, who I refer to as Dajaa (another story), started an innocent, little Halloween-time gag that, well, escalated.

It started after I pulled twin cotton padding from a bottle of medication. I laid them out on the table and remarked that they looked like ghost poop. Dajaa agreed and took the ghost poops to her room. I thought they might end up lining a jewelry box or the like.

Then one fine October day I get into the car, put the keys in the ignition and...

And then the next morning when I went to make coffee...

I had no choice but to retaliate. So I fetched the other cotton, gave it a face, and began to plot and scheme.

The next morning...

Please note, at no point here was the ghost poop's life in danger. There was indeed a fresh roll of toilet paper sitting on the bathtub ledge.

From that point on...it was war.

We both brought our fight faces. And then all hallows broke loose...

On Halloween Day a truce was declared. There was some talk of attaching teeny halos and resurrecting the cottons as Angel Poop Wars, but I'm fairly certain all warring parties are,er, tired.