Daddy is an Undertaker: Poker Boy, #10

By Dean Wesley Smith

What’s a girl to do when Daddy wants her dead?

Mortuary Dan, otherwise known as Death himself, just happens to be her father.

Poker Boy and his team must help the only daughter of Death understand that she might not really die as she turns twenty-one.

Even though she will.

Sort of....

• Language: English
• Publisher: WMG Publishing
• Release date: Sep 22, 2016
• ISBN: 9781536566864

Dean Wesley Smith

Considered one of the most prolific writers working in modern fiction, USA Today bestselling writer Dean Wesley Smith published far more than a hundred novels in forty years, and hundreds of short stories across many genres. At the moment he produces novels in several major series, including the time travel Thunder Mountain novels set in the Old West, the galaxy-spanning Seeders Universe series, the urban fantasy Ghost of a Chance series, a superhero series starring Poker Boy, and a mystery series featuring the retired detectives of the Cold Poker Gang. His monthly magazine, Smith’s Monthly, which consists of only his own fiction, premiered in October 2013 and offers readers more than 70,000 words per issue, including a new and original novel every month. During his career, Dean also wrote a couple dozen Star Trek novels, the only two original Men in Black novels, Spider-Man and X-Men novels, plus novels set in gaming and television worlds. Writing with his wife Kristine Kathryn Rusch under the name Kathryn Wesley, he wrote the novel for the NBC miniseries The Tenth Kingdom and other books for Hallmark Hall of Fame movies. He wrote novels under dozens of pen names in the worlds of comic books and movies, including novelizations of almost a dozen films, from The Final Fantasy to Steel to Rundown. Dean also worked as a fiction editor off and on, starting at Pulphouse Publishing, then at VB Tech Journal, then Pocket Books, and now at WMG Publishing, where he and Kristine Kathryn Rusch serve as series editors for the acclaimed Fiction River anthology series. For more information about Dean’s books and ongoing projects, please visit his website at www.deanwesleysmith.com and sign up for his newsletter.

Book preview

What’s a girl to do when Daddy wants her dead?

Mortuary Dan, otherwise known as Death himself, just happens to be her father.

Poker Boy and his team must help the only daughter of Death understand that she might not really die as she turns twenty-one.

Even though she will.

Sort of....

CHAPTER ONE

I USUALLY FIND the people I’m going to help by accident. Most of us superheroes do, or we are told to help someone by one of our bosses.

But this time, my sidekick and girlfriend, Patty Ledgerwood, aka Front Desk Girl brought me a person who really needed help.

And I do mean a lot of help if she planned on staying alive more than another few hours.

Actually, Patty sent my boss, Stan, the God of Poker, to get me.

It was a dark and rainy Oregon Saturday night in March. I was dressed and watching a rerun of an old Star Trek show starring the bald actor whose name I can never remember. In an hour or so, I planned on heading over to the casino near the doublewide trailer I called home. I never went near the casino too early on a weekend night, because the players were new and fresh and hadn’t had enough drinks.

I always gave the Saturday players a few hours, and then went over to take the money that they were willing to give to me across the poker table. Even though I was a superhero, I still had to make a living, and playing poker was my way of doing it.

Knock, knock. Poker Boy, need to talk, the voice-without-a-body said from the middle of the air in my living room, interrupting a scene with an alien with a forehead problem and some sort of sticky paste-like substance.

I knew the voice. Stan had only been to my home once before for only a second. It wasn’t like him to be polite and actually knock.

I’m decent, I said, standing and heading for my superhero