Thirteen Magic Pumpkin Seeds Paranormal/Humor

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TAGLINE (Thirteen Magic Pumpkin Seeds)

A half-bionic computer nerd teams up with a beautiful witch and an assortment of Halloween characters in a series of misadventures to save a small country from a zombie apocalypse.

BLURB (Thirteen Magic Pumpkin Seeds)

Finn Dagdaman’s six-year-old life was saved with experimental robotic body parts, making him feel even more of an awkward misfit. When the military rediscovers his bionic abilities as an adult and offers to make him a fully bionic super-soldier, part of Finn yearns to be a hero like his brother. Then he meets a sassy witch with a daughter whose mischievous dog seeks out misadventures. In trying to rescue Batzy from his latest antics, they gather a zany cast of Halloween characters and are swept into saving a small country from a zombie apocalypse. Who is behind these misdeeds, and can bionics and spells set things right before the Halloween clock strikes midnight?

EXCERPT (Thirteen Magic Pumpkin Seeds)

With a swirl of a spell cast by Asteria, the group returned to the meadow where Batram had collided with Batzy and Sherbet when they were escaping the spider web using the power of Sherbet’s rocket shoes. The wind rattled the bare branches of the trees surrounding them, reminding them the storm still had more power to unleash.

“I’ve been researching what could go wrong with sonar.” Because it was faster, Finn accessed the internet with his bionic eye while he faked scrolling on his phone.

You wouldn’t have to do that if you were just honest with the people you love, his internal computer stated. But Asteria is smart. She knows something doesn’t correlate.

No time for that internal debate right now, Finn said to himself. Maybe after we set things right from this misadventure.

“It could be a matter of adjusting the range of the sound waves. In which case, Batram might have received a slight concussion and everything will be fine when that heals. Or…” Finn looked at Batram. “Have your ears always been slightly bent?”

“Slightly bent?” Confusion crinkled Batram’s brow.

“Folded backward a bit at the tips?”

“I don’t know. That sounds like one of my uncle’s ears when he hit a window after eating fermented blackberries from a human’s wine making.”

“If you collided with Sherbet and Batzy when they were rocketing over the trees, maybe your ears got bent in the collision. So it might not be sending the sound waves that’s the problem, but in receiving the signals you get back.”

“So how could we straighten them?” Shabina Louise asked.

“Hair gel,” Chloe stated. “That’s how my mom made my hair stand on end to go with my costume.”

Batram looked at Chloe’s hair closely. “Your hair glows and is sparkly.”

“Florescent hair gel with sparkles,” Chloe said. “Special for Halloween.”

“Well, if it helps correct my sonar, I’ll try it. Maybe I’ll start a new trend among the other bats.”

“Where’s your hair gel?” Shabina Louise asked.

“On the bathroom counter at my house, I think.”

“You think?”

“Well, I tossed a bunch of stuff on my bed, but Mom did my hair in the bathroom, so she probably put it back where it belongs.”

Shabina Louise turned to Asteria. “Could you make the hair gel appear here?”

Asteria raised an eyebrow. “I think that would be good practice for you. Just have Chloe picture her bathroom in her mind and command the hair gel to materialize here.”

The little witch pushed out a frustrated sigh. Why did her mother make her do everything for herself? Asteria’s spells always worked and Shabina Louise had to try several times.

As if reading her mind, Asteria said, “When I was a girl, my spells didn’t always work first time either. It may seem frustrating to try over and over, but that’s the way your spells become really good.”

Shabina Louise pursed her mouth in concentration for a moment, then held out her hand and said, “Gel so sparkly, gel so bright, come to us tonight.”

With just a slight hesitation, a tube of toothpaste appeared in her hand. “You have florescent toothpaste with sparkles too?”

Chloe shrugged. “The hair gel should be on the other side of the sink.”

Once again, Shabina Louise held out her hand. “Tube on the left, not the right, make an appearance, colorful and bright.”

“That’s it!” Chloe squealed in delight.

“Good job, my girl. Now let’s see what we can do with Batram’s ears.”

“You hold Batram,” Chloe said to Shabina Louise. “And I’ll put the gel on like Mom did with my hair.”

The girls set to work and soon had Batram’s ears standing straight up again.

“Ready for a test flight?”

Slowly, Batram nodded his head. Shabina Louise held her hand up. “High in the sky, straight and true, may your sonar work perfectly for you.”

Batram flew in a practice circle around the tree, then tilted his face upward and soared higher. Above the trees, then toward the moon, he looped back down and shouted, “Just call the bat hotline if you need me. And thank you, my friends. Happy Halloween!”

The humans waved and the animals wagged their tails in fond farewell to their little friend.

“What’s the bat hotline?” Chloe asked.

“Probably just a joke.” Finn did not want to confess that with the acute hearing on his right or bionic side he could hear the signals sent out by bats to echolocate, as well as mimic bat “clicks” to tune into the bat hotline that linked bat colonies all around the world. “Okay, next stop?”

“Well, I’d like to be human again.” Maurina stared at her eight legs, one at a time. “I’ve learned that words can be hurtful, so think before speaking. After seeing how all of you try to help others, I realize the life I had back in the 1700s was very selfish and shallow. I wasn’t making a positive difference in anyone’s life, including my own.”

“Bravo, my dear.” Asteria took off her pointed witch’s hat and bowed to Maurina. “You have done what the enchanted pumpkin patch is meant to do: change a person’s thinking to make a better life. But this darned computer has another glitch that won’t let me access my spell book to look up a potion to help you become human again.”

Thought I fixed that too. Finn frowned as Asteria handed him the computer tablet. “Let me make one more tweak to the programming to let you access your spell book while the tracking program also keeps tabs on those transported to the enchanted pumpkin patch.”

“I want to access everything Spell Central decreed we should automate,” Asteria said. “I think Bruney was taken in by the pretty face of a con man masquerading as a computer expert. This will bring witches into the modern world, he said. Will make magic much easier, he insisted. Dolion just wanted to her magic to increase his own power.”

As Finn accessed the programming, the wind began swirling around them.

“What’s happening?”

Grateful for the strength of the bionic side of his body, Finn locked his arms around the girls and Asteria, who clung to the cats and Batzy. Maurina in spider form dropped into Finn’s pocket to ride out the storm.

Faster and faster. Around and around they spun. When the wind stopped abruptly and they fell toward the ground, Chloe screamed.

KEYWORDS:  humorous, Halloween, witches, talking dogs, sweet romance, fantasy

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LINKS

Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B09GNTD513

Barnes and Noble: Thirteen Magic Pumpkin Seeds by Genie Gabriel | NOOK Book (eBook) | Barnes & Noble® (barnesandnoble.com)

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Kobo: https://www.kobo.com/us/en/ebook/thirteen-magic-pumpkin-seeds

Google Play: https://play.google.com/store/books/details?id=bdZDEAAAQBAJ