Digging Up the Past by Sandi Brackeen

Book Title: Digging Up the Past Author: Sandi Brackeen Genre: Urban Fantasy 

 Release Date: August 22, 2015 Hosted by: Book Enthusiast Promotions

 

The Spade of Apocatequil can raise the dead and grant immortality—and it’s been stolen!

When supernatural agents Riley Perez and Jason, her partner at the clandestine government agency DUE, are given the task of tracking down the magical artifact, they discover that the culprit may be one of the workers at an archaeological dig at Shady Shores. Is it John Braden, the head archaeologist on-site, who was involved in the original discovery of the spade? Or is it Danny Roget, the anthropologist, who claims that there have been strange sightings? Riley and Jason’s hunt for the spade is endangered by a rash of sudden, unexplainable deaths of people involved in the dig. Together with Cameron Delaney, the intriguing alpha werewolf who runs Cerberus Security, the company in charge of protecting the archaeologists at the dig, Riley and Jason must find the spade before it can be used to destroy the world!

Guest blog: Riley Perez Hi, I’m Riley. When you read the stories in the Tales from Atlantis series, you’ll be reading about me and my associates. They are also friends, but I think associates sounds more professional. The PTBs at Homeland Security don’t think the agents are DUE are nearly professional enough, but then, we’re not the kind of agents they’re used to dealing with. Almost all of the agents at HSS are military, or were before they became agents. Not a single DUE agent has ever been anywhere near the military. What we are is preternatural. This is also the reason DUE hired us, and well, you can’t have it both ways. We take care of those things that the mundane agents can’t, which includes most cases involving supernaturals. There are a surprising number of those cases, in spite of the fact that most people still deny that we exist, but as a result, our numbers are growing daily, and the Norms at HSS never quite know how to deal with us. I figure that’s why they act like we’re either indestructible, or dispensable. Current money in the office pool favors indestructible, but it goes back and forth. History says this all started about two hundred years ago when some scavengers hauled off the stones on the Bimini Road. When that happened, magic returned to the earth, and Atlantis rose. Now, Atlantis sits out there in the Atlantic Ocean and for some reason, no one wants to go there. Explain that! I certainly can’t, but on the other hand, I have no desire to go there either, so I can’t fault anyone else for not wanting to go. The thing is, after all the legend and myth surrounding Atlantis, it makes no sense that no one wants to go there. However, that’s a topic for another day. Today, I just want to tell you about the case we’re working on in Digging Up the Past. In this case, we’re trying to find a spade. Yes, a shovel. Sounds simple enough, right? Well, this particular spade grants the holder immortality and can raise the dead, which makes it a bit more complex. The file says it was headed here to be on display at the Smithsonian, but it never arrived. The scientists on the dig where it was discovered have returned to Denton to their home university, and are working on a recent dig at the local lake. A number of the other people on the dig are also at this site, so that’s where we’re going to start. No one can say exactly where the spade disappeared. It left Peru like it was supposed to, but it was not there when the plane arrived in Washington. Our job is to figure out which one of these people took it. The options are the Braden’s, the lead archeologists on the dig, the anthropologist Nick Manulito, Professor Jackson, who supervises the grad students, and the grad students themselves. Oh yeah, we have to find it before they get a chance to use it.

 

Sandi lives in Texas with a roommate, two yellow Labs, a shepherd/border collie mix, and two terrier mixes. The animals were all rescues. Her full-time job is as the public information officer for the local sheriff’s office, and she teaches English part time at the local community college. She says she has a couple of degrees lying around somewhere, and she’s been writing ever since she can remember, although she took time off for work and school, and previously her writing has been more geared toward short stories and academic papers. Sandi has now switched to writing fiction and currently has several more books in the works.