Archive for the ‘News’ Category
Welcome to the February 2021 issue of my newsletter, “News from the Crypt,” and please visit Carter’s Crypt, devoted to my horror, fantasy, and paranormal romance work, especially focusing on vampires and shapeshifting beasties. If you have a particular fondness for vampires, check out the chronology of my series in the link labeled “Vanishing Breed Vampire Universe.” For my recommendations of “must read” classic and modern vampire fiction, explore the Realm of the Vampires:
Realm of the Vampires
Also, check out the multi-author Alien Romances Blog
The long-time distributor of THE VAMPIRE’S CRYPT has closed its website. If you would like to read any issue of this fanzine, which contains fiction, interviews, and a detailed book review column, e-mail me to request the desired issue, and I’ll send you a free PDF of it. My e-mail address is at the end of this newsletter. Find information about the contents of each issue on this page of my website:
A complete list of my available works, arranged roughly by genre, with purchase links (gradually being updated as the Amber Quill and Ellora’s Cave works are being republished):
For anyone who would like to read previous issues of this newsletter, they’re posted on my website here (starting from January 2018):
This is my Facebook author page. Please visit!
Facebook
Here’s my page in Barnes and Noble’s Nook store:
Barnes and Noble
Here’s the list of my Kindle books on Amazon. (The final page, however, includes some Ellora’s Cave anthologies in which I don’t have stories):
Carter Kindle Books
Here’s a shortcut URL to my author page on Amazon:
Amazon
My Goodreads page:
Goodreads
Please “Like” my author Facebook page (cited above) to see reminders when each monthly newsletter is uploaded. I’ve also noticed that I’m more likely to be shown posts from liked or friended sources in my Facebook feed when I’ve “Liked” some of their individual posts, so you might want to do that, too. Thanks!
Writers Exchange E-Publishing has recently published AGAINST THE DARK DEVOURER, my dark paranormal romance with Lovecraftian elements. Although a next-generation sequel to FROM THE DARK PLACES, it could be read on its own. When her mother dies unexpectedly, Deborah learns she has a destiny to fight against invasive entities from beyond our space-time continuum. Meanwhile, Victor, who has been brought up with the mission of either turning her to the dark side or luring her in to be destroyed, finds himself falling in love with her, an attraction she reluctantly returns. An excerpt from the opening scene appears below.
I’ve finished preparing this year’s vampire fiction bibliography update, comprising mostly 2020 publications along with a few older works and some January 2021 releases. If you’d like a copy of the file, please e-mail me at the address at the end of the newsletter.
In this month of Valentine’s Day, I’m interviewing Marilyn Baron, a romance author who has a story with me in the “One Scoop or Two” themed anthology SWEET SCOOPS, which you can find here:
*****
Interview with Marilyn Baron:
What inspired you to begin writing?
I read Little House on the Prairie by Laura Ingalls Wilder and I knew I wanted to be a writer. I majored in Journalism (Public Relations) and minored in English (Creative Writing) in college. After graduation, I was a corporate communications manager with AT&T, then owner of a public relations firm. I’ve been writing ever since. My first novel was published in 2013, and to date, I’ve written 25 works of fiction, with two more expected to be published this year.
What genres do you work in?
I write in a variety of genres, from women’s fiction to historical romantic thrillers and romantic suspense to paranormal/fantasy. Conventional wisdom says stick to one genre, but I Iike the flexibility and variety genre switching offers. I’ve just written my first cozy mystery and really enjoyed the experience.
Do you outline, “wing it,” or something in between?
I would say I wing it. I’m more of a “pantser.” I don’t outline or plot in advance. I write and edit as I go along. I always have to have the title of the book and the names of the main characters before I start a novel. I also know the ending, but things can go anywhere in between.
What have been the major influences on your writing (favorite authors, life experiences, or whatever)?
I had some great teachers who inspired and encouraged me to write. I always wrote for the school newspaper either as editor or feature writer, poetry for the school literary magazine, and I wrote scripts for school assembly programs. I’m an avid reader and I believe the more you read and the more you write, the better writer you’ll become. As far as life experiences, travel really influences my writing. The six months I spent in college in Florence, Italy, studying Italian, art history and mythology, made a big impression. Many of my novels are set either fully or partially in Florence or other places I’ve visited.
You’ve written several historical thrillers. How do you carry out research for historical fiction?
I did extensive research for my first book, Under the Moon Gate. I was in the process of writing it for 10 years on and off. It was set in contemporary and WW II Bermuda and I did a lot of research at the public library. I read old copies of The New York Times during the war years and The Royal Gazette, published in Bermuda, and my family and I vacationed in Bermuda a dozen times. My novel, Stumble Stones, set in Berlin, was inspired by a trip I took to that city. My favorite time period to write is WW II so I was already pretty familiar with that era. The Siege, set in Greece, was also inspired by a trip I took to Greece many years ago. The Saffron Conspiracy, set in Austria and Scotland, was inspired by a river cruise my husband and I took along the Danube and an excursion to a saffron farm. I did a lot of research about saffron and saffron farming. When I’m researching, I always pick a little-known nugget of information that fascinates me and I fashion a story with fictional characters around true events.
In addition to your personal experience of Florence, did you need to do any specific research for your “One Scoop or Two” story, “Stracciatella Gelato: Melting Time”?
I didn’t do much research for that story since I based parts of it on real-life experiences. My husband and I spent time in Italy (Lake Como, Rome, Amalfi Coast and Florence) before COVID in October 2019, because I said I wanted to revisit some of the places in Italy I thought I might never see again. When we were there, he asked ‘what if?’ What if you could go back in time to your college days and know now what you didn’t know then? The action is set off by a reverse Roma curse. I was actually cursed by a gypsy while I was a student in Florence. The story practically wrote itself. Since I’d recently returned to all my old haunts, everything became familiar again.
How, if at all, does your day job in public relations affect your writing career (e.g., marketing strategies)?
Having my own PR firm was helpful in developing my writing craft, interviewing people for research, and it definitely helped in marketing my books (writing press releases, planning special events, etc.). Majoring in Journalism and working with corporate clients instilled in me a dedication to meeting deadlines, which is critical in this profession.
What are you working on now?
I have a contract with The Wild Rose Press for a contemporary novel with a dual timeframe called The Romanov Legacy. It’s a high-concept women’s fiction with a fast-paced contemporary and historical timeline about two women, born a century apart, who fall in love with the wrong men, with disastrous consequences that could change the world. When a young single mother discovers she’s descended from the last Tsar, Nicholas II, she becomes the best hope of a secret society, Guardians of the Romanov Legacy, dedicated to restoring a Romanov to the throne.
And I’ve submitted a cozy mystery series (The Case of the Missing Botticelli, A Massimo Domingo Mystery, Book 1). In the first book of the series, American art history major Hadley Evans joins an art detective agency in Florence, Italy, working for Massimo Domingo, once a major player, now the ‘Inspector Clouseau’ of the art world. Determined to save the flailing agency and prove her worth, Hadley and her sexy Carabinieri boyfriend, Luca Ferrari, take on a mysterious client behind her boss’s back. Hot on the trail of a missing masterpiece, Hadley and Luca discover a hidden cache of stolen Nazi art in a Venetian villa and encounter an enemy with a link to an evil past. For this book I did some more research about stolen Nazi art, a theme that is featured in many of my books.
What advice would you give to aspiring writers?
Finish the book. You can always correct a work in progress, but you can’t fix a blank page. Never give up on your dreams.
What is the URL of your website?
What about other Internet presence?
Twitter (@MarilynBaron)
Facebook Marilyn Baron, Author
Goodreads
*****
Some Books I’ve Read Lately:
TALES FROM THE HINTERLAND, by Melissa Albert. After reading Albert’s portal fantasy THE HAZEL WOOD, I wished the fairy tale collection written by the reclusive grandmother of the narrator, Alice, existed in this world. Well, here it is. As foreshadowed in THE HAZEL WOOD, these stories are uniformly twisted and dark. The book is designed like an old-fashioned volume of fairy tales, with creepy illustrations in black and red. Some of the stories echo familiar lore, such as “The Door That Wasn’t There,” with a Cinderella evil-stepmother premise, and “The Sea Cellar,” reminiscent of “Bluebeard,” about a mysterious house inhabited by an unknown person or creature, where brides go and never come out. Others feature classic fairy-tale motifs without retelling any particular single story. They contain elements such as queens longing for children, seductive but lethal forest or undersea denizens, the Moon watching over her half-mortal granddaughter, the undead, and encounters with Death personified. Almost none of the stories have happy or even potentially happy endings. This Gothic-toned collection can be read entirely independently of THE HAZEL WOOD but will have added resonance for readers of the novel. “Alice-Three-Times,” in particular, enhances the backstory revealed in THE HAZEL WOOD. The latter has a sequel, THE NIGHT COUNTRY, published in 2019, which I recently discovered. It begins with Alice back in the primary world, holding a job in a secondhand book shop in New York and finally settled down with her mother in a seemingly permanent home. Alice attends a support group for Hinterland refugees but otherwise considers herself free of her otherworldly past. Then she hears ominous reports of the murders of refugees, and the influence of the Hinterland overshadows her again, with Alice herself suspected of the crimes. Part of the novel is narrated by Ellery Finch, her friend who chose to stay in the Hinterland and now roams from world to world. If you enjoyed THE HAZEL WOOD, you’ll want to read this follow-up book.
ACROSS THE GREEN GRASS FIELDS, by Seanan McGuire. This latest installment in the Wayward Children series, as claimed in the cover blurb, can be read on its own. It doesn’t even mention Miss Eleanor’s boarding school, a refuge for children and teenagers who have visited other worlds and unwillingly returned to ours. Heroine Regan, however, ten years old when she stumbles upon her door, would definitely fit into the school. Preoccupied almost to the point of obsession with playing the role of a “normal” girl, she loves horses, fortunately an acceptable passion for a preteen girl. When she learns a secret about herself that devastates her sense of normality, she finds her way into the Hooflands. Meeting a young female centaur who’s rounding up an escapee from her family’s unicorn herd, Regan discovers that this world’s sentient inhabitants are all hooved human-animal hybrids such as centaurs, minotaurs, and satyrs. For the centaur clan, hosting a human is a thrilling honor. On the rare occasions when a human visitor appears, it’s a critical event, because he or she has a destined mission to perform for the welfare of the Hooflands. Regan has no desire to rush off to the Queen’s castle to find out what her mission is. With the centaurs agreeing that there’s no time limit, Regan lives happily among them for six years, although she has to beware of others who might want to kidnap her and get the reward for finding the human themselves. When she finally has to make the pilgrimage to accept her destiny as the land’s savior, she discovers that neither her own fate nor the Hooflands’ ruler is anything like what she expected. The society and culture of the centaurs is interestingly developed, and as in all the other books in the series, the worldbuilding is inventive and absorbing. I found Regan a sympathetic character, although I couldn’t fully identify with her desperate longing to fit in among the “normal” girls. (As far back as I clearly remember, I’ve considered myself slightly weird and proud of it, and I was oblivious to whatever maneuvering for popularity went on around me.) Anyway, in the Hooflands Regan finds the place where she truly belongs. While she worries about her parents at first, those feelings fade as the years go by. I must admit the final page left me asking, “Huh? That’s it? What happens now?” Maybe next year’s novel will give us a hint.
HOUSE OF THE PATRIARCH, by Barbara Hambly. I’ve been a loyal fan of Hambly’s Benjamin January historical mysteries, set in antebellum New Orleans (this novel takes place in mid-1840), since the first book, A FREE MAN OF COLOR. While I’ve enjoyed and reread all of them, my least favorite have been the installments that range away from Louisiana, with the exception of the one in which January visits Washington, DC, and meets Edgar Allan Poe. HOUSE OF THE PATRIARCH, set mostly in upstate New York, is another exception and may become one of my favorites among the later books of the series. The married lover of January’s sister (a liaison openly accepted by his wife, under the peculiar system known as “placage”) introduces him to an English couple whose daughter, Eve, disappeared off a steamboat in broad daylight. The family isn’t wealthy enough to tempt kidnapping for ransom, and Eve has no particular suitor that they know of. Her father confides that she has been avidly collecting pamphlets about utopian religious communities, and he fears that, being more intellectually curious than considered normal for a young lady, she may have run away to such a community. Both as a favor to his sister’s protector and to earn the money offered by the girl’s parents, January agrees to undertake the search, although reluctant to leave his wife and children, not to mention the relative safety of New Orleans, where his status as a respected member of the free colored subculture is well known. He narrows down Eve’s probable destination to an eccentric religious group in a rural area of New York, where an alleged clairvoyant woman holds seances. The leader of the community has a reputation for Underground Railroad activities that have shepherded countless escaped slaves into Canada. January gets an introduction to the “patriarch” in the role of such a runaway. He quickly finds reasons to doubt not only the spiritualist medium’s honesty but also the patriarch’s altruism. As usual, January soon gets entangled in sinister plots that endanger his freedom and even his life. This novel explores fascinating details about the Underground Railroad, nineteenth-century religious and utopian movements, and the spiritualist fad. Also, January meets another soon-to-be famous figure, P. T. Barnum, whose help proves vital in solving the mystery. To my delight, one small incident remains unexplained, leaving a hint of the true supernatural. This novel will repay multiple re-readings not only for the enthralling story but for the vibrantly rendered historical background.
THE LEFT-HANDED BOOKSELLERS OF LONDON, by Garth Nix. A very unusual fantasy novel set in England in 1983. Susan’s mother has always been vague about Susan’s paternity, so the young woman sets out to discover her father’s identity. One of her meager clues leads her to a “crime boss” friend of the family who, as the jacket blurb puts it, gets “turned to dust by the prick of a silver hatpin” just as she arrives to question him. Thus she makes the acquaintance of Merlin, one of the Booksellers of London, his sister Vivien, and their eccentric family. Left-handed booksellers, such as Merlin, comprise the action-oriented branch of the organization, while the right-handed are the researchers and magic-wielders. Susan’s quest for her father intersects with Merlin’s investigation of his mother’s death, thus introducing Susan to the secret magical realm called the Old World, hidden behind and under our mundane, technological New World. She encounters supernatural creatures, including a vampire (in a brief appearance) and other undead. Caught up in the tangled plots and conspiracies centered on the Grail, herein a cauldron that restores the dead to a sort of life, she eventually crosses over into the Old World and faces a life-threatening choice. The revelation of her own true nature and her father’s identity shakes her to the core (and will probably come as a shock to most readers). Meanwhile, she and Merlin form a bond that leads to a romantic attachment, not without numerous rocky bumps along the way. The novel reaches a satisfying culmination that allows, without demanding, a sequel. My only reservation is that the early part of the book moves at a pace I found rapid to the point of exhaustion, breathlessly racing from one crisis to the next. Fortunately, it later slows down enough to leave room for plenty of in-depth exposition. The world-building is fantastic in both senses of the word.
*****
Excerpt from AGAINST THE DARK DEVOURER:
The colors in the transparent tetrahedron swirled like smoke. The motion made Victor dizzy, and his stomach churned. He swallowed, tasting bile. He shook his head, impatient with his body’s reaction. By now he should be hardened to the crystal’s effects, even if he didn’t get the privilege of gazing into it very often. He didn’t want to appear weak in front of his guardian.
Uncle Hugh—no genetic relation, really, but his lifelong mentor—gave a small frown of obvious impatience at the way Victor clutched the pedestal where the object sat on one of its four triangular faces. “Straighten up. You act like you’re expecting an earthquake any second.”
“I haven’t had as much practice with this stuff as you have.” Victor kept any note of defiance out of his voice, not eager for the tongue-lashing an argument would certainly earn him. He shifted his eyes from the undulating tangle of violet tendrils. His head pounded. The decor of the windowless room didn’t help—the walls painted midnight indigo, the parquet floor of oak so dark it was nearly black, all illuminated only by a few low-wattage bulbs in wall sconces.
“Well, focus! We don’t have all day.”
Victor drew a deep breath and dragged his gaze back to the crystal. Each time he used it, he half expected the smoky whorls inside to clear away and open a peephole into a dimension of alien geometry and amorphous monsters. He had viewed that scene only once, but once was enough. Following his mentor’s instructions, he focused with all his will on the scene he wanted to scry. The luminous tendrils vanished like melting icicles. An ordinary living room shimmered into view.
A middle-aged woman with short, gray-streaked, auburn hair sat in the single armchair. Against a pile of throw pillows on a couch with faded upholstery that matched the chair reclined a woman apparently in her twenties, with hair the color of dark honey. Her tight jeans displayed generous curves. Victor willed the image to widen its scope. At the counter marking the boundary of the kitchenette stood a slim girl in a miniskirt, taller and a few years younger than the one on the couch. After watching her tie back her hair, light brown with dark blonde highlights, he moved his psychic vantage point to watch the other two women from behind her, over her shoulder. As he virtually passed in front of her, her blue eyes shifted, as if she sensed an invisible observer.
“These are our targets?” Uncle Hugh said quietly.
“Yeah, that’s them,” Victor said, keeping his eyes fixed on the scene in the crystal.
“Pull back. Try to view the outside of the house.”
Years of relentless drills made the procedure easy enough. Drifting through the closed door of the first-floor apartment like a ghost, Victor visualized himself standing in the hallway.
“Farther, now. You need to confirm the location of the building.”
Squelching a spasm of irritation at the unnecessary directions, Victor imagined himself panning the corridor with a wide-angle lens. His viewpoint moved to an exit at the end of the hall and floated into the parking lot. The building number matched the address label pasted in the hardback novel he was using as a tracer, latest installment in a bestselling sword-and-sorcery epic.
“Very good. That’s enough.”
Relaxing his cramped fingers from their grip on the pedestal, Victor exhaled a long breath and allowed the picture to fade. He stepped away, bending to pick up the book, and staggered with vertigo. His guardian clasped his elbow and led him from the room into the antechamber, graced with open windows, upholstered furniture, and a wet bar. Another door opened into Uncle Hugh’s office, a third into the corridor. “By now you shouldn’t find it such a strain, my boy.” He guided Victor to an armchair and poured him a Scotch and soda on the rocks.
After a sip of the cool drink, Victor said, “I guess I just don’t have your strength.” Though the range of Victor’s psychic gifts far exceeded the older man’s, Uncle Hugh did excel in remote viewing talent.
“Nonsense, you and your sister wouldn’t have been trained for this mission if you didn’t have the necessary ability.” He picked up a floral-patterned rain scarf from the marble-topped coffee table. “You’re quite sure the scarf belongs to the mother?”
“Well, I saw her wearing it. How else could I possibly tell?” Why did Uncle Hugh have to be so damned picky about everything? “I did the whole operation exactly the way you planned.” The evening before, he’d gone to a Vincent Price film marathon at the small, private college the two girls attended. Sitting two rows behind them, he’d used a delicate flick of telekinesis to make the scarf slip out of the mother’s jacket pocket and the book fall from the elder sister’s open shoulder bag. Another mental nudge had hidden the objects under the seat where the women wouldn’t notice and pick them up. “What do you want the scarf for, anyhow?”
“I may need a link to them again at some later time, and the more personal, the better. Other than that, the fewer details you know from this point on, the more spontaneous your reactions will appear. Telekinetically disable their car, and once you’re inside the house, you’ll know what to do when the time comes.”
-end of excerpt-
My Publishers:
Writers Exchange E-Publishing: Writers Exchange
Harlequin: Harlequin
Whiskey Creek: Whiskey Creek
Wild Rose Press: Wild Rose Press
You can contact me at: MLCVamp@aol.com
“Beast” wishes until next time—
Margaret L. Carter
Welcome to the January 2021 issue of my newsletter, “News from the Crypt,” and please visit Carter’s Crypt, devoted to my horror, fantasy, and paranormal romance work, especially focusing on vampires and shapeshifting beasties. If you have a particular fondness for vampires, check out the chronology of my series in the link labeled “Vanishing Breed Vampire Universe.” For my recommendations of “must read” classic and modern vampire fiction, explore the Realm of the Vampires:
Realm of the Vampires
Also, check out the multi-author Alien Romances Blog
The long-time distributor of THE VAMPIRE’S CRYPT has closed its website. If you would like to read any issue of this fanzine, which contains fiction, interviews, and a detailed book review column, e-mail me to request the desired issue, and I’ll send you a free PDF of it. My e-mail address is at the end of this newsletter. Find information about the contents of each issue on this page of my website:
A complete list of my available works, arranged roughly by genre, with purchase links (gradually being updated as the Amber Quill and Ellora’s Cave works are being republished):
For anyone who would like to read previous issues of this newsletter, they’re posted on my website here (starting from January 2018):
This is my Facebook author page. Please visit!
Facebook
Here’s my page in Barnes and Noble’s Nook store:
Barnes and Noble
Here’s the list of my Kindle books on Amazon. (The final page, however, includes some Ellora’s Cave anthologies in which I don’t have stories):
Carter Kindle Books
Here’s a shortcut URL to my author page on Amazon:
Amazon
My Goodreads page:
Goodreads
Please “Like” my author Facebook page (cited above) to see reminders when each monthly newsletter is uploaded. I’ve also noticed that I’m more likely to be shown posts from liked or friended sources in my Facebook feed when I’ve “Liked” some of their individual posts, so you might want to do that, too. Thanks!
Happy New Year! To quote (approximately) Col. Potter from MASH, “Here’s to the new year. May it be a durn sight better than the last one.”
In keeping with the season of “in the bleak midwinter,” below is an excerpt from an early scene in my vampire novel CHILD OF TWILIGHT. Vampire-human hybrid Gillian, age twelve, has run away from her mentor, Volnar. She plans to seek refuge with her half-human father, although they’ve met only once, when she was a toddler. Professor Grier is a man who gave her a ride on the highway; she fled from his car when he accidentally witnessed her changing shape for the first time. CHILD OF TWILIGHT appears in my two-novel omnibus TWILIGHT’S CHANGELINGS:
A new vampire research publication, the JOURNAL OF VAMPIRE STUDIES, has been inaugurated, and I have a book review in it. If interested, you can purchase a copy of the first issue here:
My first guest of the year is Leah Charifson, an award-winning author of STAR TREK fan fiction.
*****
Interview with Leah Charifson:
I suppose the most interesting thing about me is how many times I’ve changed my name in my search for an identity. In New York, as Leslye-Ann Bravin, I grew up in a (dysfunctional) family where my father told stories through art and my mother told stories through music. My maternal grandmother was a poet. The thing that we did have in my house that was readily available to me were books. All kinds of books and both parents were big on science fiction. We also had a library at the end of the street. I became an avid reader at an early age and have never stopped.
The first fanfic I ever wrote was about the series Bonanza. That was in grade school and my best friend and I would fill composition books with stories about the Cartwrights. We even invented a twin for Little Joe because we both liked him the best. I wrote my first mystery in sixth grade. It was about a boat sailing the ocean and the passengers were getting killed off. Each time somebody died an eerie voice would proclaim, “It floats.” At the very end my protagonist stood on the bow of the ship and screamed, “What floats?”
And the ocean replied, “Ivory Soap floats!”
What you want? I it was 1958 and I was in the sixth grade. My teacher laughed and that encouraged me to keep writing.
Let’s skip ahead to September 8, 1966. I was 16 years old and far more interested in my boyfriend then I was in watching the new science fiction show on TV. But as we only had one TV and everybody else wanted to watch Trek, I did too. I found it entertaining and became a frequent viewer, when I wasn’t involved with peer activities.
September 15, 1967. I was a HS senior and I had a date. My mother insisted that I should sit down and watch this show until my date arrived. “You’ll like this alien,” she said. “He’s sexy,” she said.
Ten minutes into Amok Time and I was hooked. I made my date watch til the end with me before we left.
In 1975, now married and known as Leslye Lilker, I was devoutly watching Trek in syndication, I became troubled with the big three (Kirk, Spock, McCoy) ‘spreading their seed,’ as Sargon would say, on every planet they landed. Okay. Hyperbole. But you get it. One of them was going to reproduce. The most likely candidate was Kirk, of course, so he was no fun. Bones? He already had a daughter. But Spock? My sexy alien? My sexy, young, unemotional Vulcan? What if he had to accept being a father to a ten-year-old three quarter Vulcan, raised by humans, whose first words to him were, “Take your logic and shove it widthwise.”
And that was the start of the Sahaj Universe. Encouraged by my then co-editor, Linda Silverman, I wrote the story where Sahaj and Spock met for the first time. I wrote the story badly. Ungrammatically. Full of misspellings. Typos. Used ‘it’s’ for ‘its.’ Found out about a con in Pittsburgh. Learned that other people also wrote fanfic and sold it in zines, at cons. So Linda and I went to Pittsburgh with 25 copies of IDIC #1, cover by Doug Drexler, and, at $2 a copy, sold out in the first ten minutes. I had no idea that Sahaj would be so well received, and that my little, badly written story, “The Ambassador’s Son,” would morph into a saga which is still continuing.
While people responded to the story, they also rightfully criticized it for the plot holes and all the other flaws a baby writer puts into a story. I received many a letter of comment, filled with constructive criticism, and I tried to take each one to heart. But the readers wanted more about Sahaj and his developing relationship with Spock, with Kirk, and with McCoy. And, of course, with Sarek and Amanda.
We didn’t have social media then. Everything was done by snail mail. Advertising was by word of mouth and reviews in other zines. At one point, I had a world-wide distribution of over 3,000 copies of each issue. The Forging earned Fan Q awards at T’Con, 1978, for both writing (me, with lots of support from lots of people) and for Alice Jones’ exquisite artwork. It may sound like boasting, but be assured, I was terrified to find people liked my work. As an introvert, I found it challenging to speak on panels, play my guitar and sing, and hear praise for what I’d done. Practice helped, and I when I was the auctioneer at one of the art auctions in NY, I actually had fun!
I still find it hard to accept praise, though. I kind of feel that I’m just the conduit, and not the creator.
I divorced in 1977 and remarried in 1983, to another Trek fan, moved to California, and became known as Leslye Lubkin. David and I had a daughter, Joanna (yes, we tipped our hat to McCoy) in 1985. She became a third generation fan on my side, and a fourth generation fan on David’s side.
Another divorce in 1991 brought me to Little Rock, Arkansas, of all places. I was now known as Leslye Morrow, married in 1993 to another Trek fan, who I had met on line.
In 2004 I went back to school to finish my BA in Multicultural literature. My daughter and I both graduated college in 2005. I was fifty-five years old, and entered a program to earn a non-traditional teacher’s license. As Jacqueline Lichtenberg (Kraith. Sime-Gen) once told me: “Learn one. Teach one.” Since I was teaching high school English and ESL in Little Rock’s famous Central High, and writing was part of the curriculum, I was forced to pay attention to what had become habit to me. In helping my students improve their writing, I must have been improving my own.
I usually start out by dreaming something. Then I begin to construct a bacon cheeseburger with lettuce, tomato and cheese (not kosher, I know!) on a bun. That’s the analogy I gave my students so they’d understand how all the elements of a story depend on the meat, or theme – the universal truth according to the author.
If more information on those elements are needed, please google ‘elements of fiction.’ If I start explaining those elements this interview will turn into a textbook.
I am a visual learner. I also am linear and concrete. This creates an inner editor who is ruthless and unforgiving. That means I write and rewrite and add and subtract, and multiply, and divide until I can read my story and it makes sense to me (at least, until the next time I read it!). It’s kind of like an artist, sketching a drawing on canvass and then filling in the details to make the picture pop. Then I turn it over to my Beta readers, who find most of the mistakes I’ve made.
So far, there are sixteen short stories (one by NTM’s creator and professional author, Jean Lorrah), five novellas, and two novels in the Sahaj Universe, with more coming, albeit slowly. Some of the early stories have been edited and revised. Some are brand new. The original artwork by Alice Jones, PS Nim, Signe Landon, Gordon Carlton, Gee Moaven, and Doug Drexler have been included in the new versions.
For the last name change, that occurred in 2011, when I divorced for the third time. I chose to take my Hebrew name, Leah, and my maternal grandfather’s last name, to honor him. So I became Leah Hannah Charifson, and I have no intention of changing it again.
People are welcome to visit Sahaj’s e-book store (donate as little as $1 to download, and some are free) at
Sahaj Continues.
We also host other authors, universes, and genres. Any questions can be directed to sahaj.of.vulcan@ gmail.com.
I’ve also got a private group, made up of 135 original fans who are readers, writers, artists, poets, and musicians. We always have room for one more and anything Trek related is welcome. You’ll find Sahaj Continued here:
Facebook: Sahaj Continued.
Margaret Carter, I am humbled by your request for an interview. May you, and your readers, live long and prosper.
*****
Some Books I’ve Read Lately:
JOLENE, by Mercedes Lackey. The first Elemental Masters novel not set in Britain or Europe, this one takes place in the mountains of Tennessee around 1890. I enjoyed the Appalachian setting, culture, and dialect (with one exception, mentioned below) very much. The contrast between traditional mountain farming communities and the lives of coal miners on the constant edge of poverty in thrall to the company store weaves a thread through the plot. Sixteen-year-old Anna, the weak, sickly daughter of a miner and his wife, longs for the greenery and clean air of the woods. But, like every child in town, she spends her days toiling at whatever chores she has the strength for. Her timid mother stands up to her overbearing father, for once, to insist Anna be sent to live with Aunt Jinny, whose potions help to support the family as well as maintaining Anna in some semblance of health. Anna has qualms about leaving home, despite the low-grade misery that pervades its atmosphere along with the literal poison in the air from the mine. After all, she’s going to live with an aunt who’s a stranger to her, with a reputation for witchcraft. Aunt Jinny’s cottage turns out to seem luxurious compared to Anna’s old home. Jinny herself is at first brusque but not unkind. Anna settles in more or less comfortably even though she sometimes catches glimpses of odd things around the house. As Anna becomes more proficient at her new tasks, Jinny realizes she has a talent for magic, which Jinny calls “the Glory.” Meanwhile, Anna becomes healthier and stronger. Readers familiar with the Elemental Masters series will quickly realize that Anna, as an Earth magician, has been weakened all her life by the foul atmosphere of the mining town. She becomes acquainted with Earth elementals as well as a clan of Cherokees living in a secluded hollow nearby. She also meets and begins to fall in love with Josh, a young stone carver with the talent of a true artist. The title character, Jolene, doesn’t appear until about a third of the way through the book. Discerning Anna’s gift, Jolene offers to teach her things Jinny would be unwilling or unable to. A creature of the fae who, as Anna learns by reading her great-grandfather’s journal, came with him to the New World, Jolene is an enigmatic figure. Not evil but not precisely good either, she is benevolent toward people she favors but dangerous to those who offend her. She also becomes interested in Josh because of his artistic gift. The novel derives its folkloric background from a fairy tale new to me, “The Mistress of the Copper Mountain,” a Slavic legend. It also alludes to the familiar country song (“Jolene, Jolene, I’m begging of you, please don’t take my man”) almost verbatim in one dialogue passage. The actual villain, a mine foreman with powerful elemental magic, who desires Anna for her gift as well as her body, doesn’t show up until near the end. I didn’t mind, though, since the relationship between Anna and her aunt, Anna’s introduction the magical realm, and the Appalachian setting riveted my interest. Aside from a few typos, only two stylistic flaws bothered me. A minor one is the phonetic spelling of occasional words that have ordinary mainstream English pronunciations, e.g., “close” for “clothes,” an unnecessary and distracting mannerism. The other, more important, is the constant use of “y’all” for the singular. Granted, I’ve never lived in Tennessee; however, I never heard my older relatives who spoke a North Carolina dialect use “y’all” as anything but a plural.
HOW THE KING OF ELFHAME LEARNED TO HATE STORIES, by Holly Black. This collection of connected tales, a spinoff from Black’s Folk of the Air trilogy (THE CRUEL PRINCE, etc.), would be fully accessible only to readers of that series. Here we learn about episodes from Prince (now King of Elfhame) Cardan’s childhood and youth as an unwanted, even scorned younger son. As the cover blurb puts it, we see how he developed a “heart of stone.” The stories from the past are framed by an opening and closing sequence in which King Cardan and his mortal changeling queen, Jude, travel on a mission to the human world. In keeping with the fairy-tale tone of the title, over the course of the chapters a troll woman tells young Cardan the legend of a boy with a heart of stone, but she changes the narrative slightly each time. The book is illustrated with numerous evocative drawings. Fans of the trilogy will definitely want this volume.
SUBVERSIVE, by Crystal Downing. The subtitle of this book effectively summarizes its thesis: “Christ, Culture, and the Subversive Dorothy Sayers.” Although touching upon some biographical details in passing, the book mainly focuses on analysis of various theological and cultural themes in Sayers’s nonfiction works such as THE MIND OF THE MAKER and her many essays, as well as THE MAN BORN TO BE KING, her radio play cycle on the life of Christ, and stand-alone dramas such as THE ZEAL OF THY HOUSE. The author also explores how Sayers’s ideas are dramatized in the Lord Peter Wimsey series, notably GAUDY NIGHT. While reading the introduction, I braced myself for the prospect of a book comprising mostly explications of materials the typical fan of Sayers’s nonfiction would already be familiar with. However, happily, SUBVERSIVE proves to be much more than that. The author explores lesser-known works by Sayers and quotes from more obscure sources such as letters, making cogent, in-depth connections among a wide range of writings. In my opinion, the term “subversive” is applied rather broadly at some points, occasionally stretched beyond its usual definition to make it fit the book’s thesis. Sayers herself might have reservations about being labeled “subversive” for summarizing and commenting on perfectly orthodox (with a small O) mainline Christian doctrines, not to mention posing the seemingly obvious question, “Are Women Human?” On the whole, though, I found Downing’s work absorbing and informative, well worth the read for any Sayers devotee. I could have done without most of Downing’s attempts to apply Sayers’s ideas to contemporary issues, especially when accompanied by anecdotes from the author’s personal experience. But those passages didn’t feel so obtrusive as to detract from the book’s overall effect.
*****
Excerpt from CHILD OF TWILIGHT:
And now, reflected Gillian as she maintained her steady trot, Professor Grier knew there was something strange about her. He didn’t merely have cause for suspicion; he had seen her change. She had broken one of the most vital rules. She couldn’t begin to guess how Dr. Volnar would punish her if she went back to him. So she didn’t dare go back, not for a long time. Her father, at least, would understand. Maybe.
After a while the rain stopped. Her energy was fading again. Wearing only the remains of a blouse, she found the night chilly and wished for her jacket, which she’d left in Grier’s van. Along with the backpack containing extra clothes and everything else she’d paused to grab on her way out of the hotel in Atlanta. She fingered her one remaining asset, the delicate gold cross that hung around her neck. That was worth money, she knew, but she had no idea where to sell jewelry. She wasted little thought on her losses. More important at the moment, she needed food.
Slowing to a walk, she tiptoed soundlessly among the trees, listening and sniffing the air. The wet soil and plants carried odors well. Within a few minutes she scented a rabbit crouched under an evergreen bush. Squatting a few feet away, Gillian focused on the motionless animal. The healthy glow of its aura made her mouth water. Still as a stone herself, with one hand outstretched, she silently called to the rabbit. This talent she had possessed for several years. Unlike her new sensitivity to human emotions, her link with animals didn’t overwhelm her and shatter her control.
The rabbit inched from beneath the tangled branches and gave a tentative hop in her direction. Gillian held her breath. She mustn’t make a hasty move and scare the creature away. It hopped closer. She encouraged it with a soothing hum. One more hop and it hunched within reach of her hand. She stroked the rough fur on its back until the rabbit’s racing heartbeat calmed. Picking it up, she cradled the animal in her arms, exposing the nearly hairless belly.
Its body heat was balm to her cold, aching limbs. With a sigh of relief she sat down against a tree and pressed her mouth to the rabbit’s abdomen. The razor-sharp edge of her incisors opened a minute slit in the skin, and she sucked avidly. Her prey sank into sleep, coma, and finally death without the slightest spasm of pain.
Gently laying aside the drained body, she resumed walking. Soon dawn would force her to seek shelter. She couldn’t travel any farther without a good day’s rest. About an hour later, she came upon a dense thicket of pines tainted by no lingering scent of human intrusion. From the map she’d consulted, she knew this area must be part of a national forest. The trees would screen her from the view of low-flying light aircraft as well as from the sun. With luck nobody would stumble across her hiding place while she slept.
She nestled into a pile of sodden leaves, grumbling at the chill and dampness. All the other times she’d spent the day outside, the excursions had been planned. Volnar had provided her with a sleeping bag and pup tent. How she longed for those amenities now! Tired as she was, though, discomfort couldn’t keep her awake for long. Nor could the worries that revolved endlessly in her head. Would her father accept her at least temporarily, or try to send her back to Volnar? She knew her father hadn’t wanted a child. He’d been pressured into begetting Gillian. Half-human himself, he had bequeathed human genes to her, traits that made her incomplete, defective—or so she’d heard it whispered for most of her life. On the other hand, human fathers, unlike males among Gillian’s mother’s people, were supposed to care for their children. Why hadn’t Gillian’s father defied Volnar’s rules to contact her at least occasionally?
-end of excerpt-
*****
My Publishers:
Writers Exchange E-Publishing: Writers Exchange
Harlequin: Harlequin
Whiskey Creek: Whiskey Creek
Wild Rose Press: Wild Rose Press
You can contact me at: MLCVamp@aol.com
“Beast” wishes until next time—
Margaret L. Carter
Welcome to the December 2020 issue of my newsletter, “News from the Crypt,” and please visit Carter’s Crypt, devoted to my horror, fantasy, and paranormal romance work, especially focusing on vampires and shapeshifting beasties. If you have a particular fondness for vampires, check out the chronology of my series in the link labeled “Vanishing Breed Vampire Universe.” For my recommendations of “must read” classic and modern vampire fiction, explore the Realm of the Vampires:
Realm of the Vampires
Also, check out the multi-author Alien Romances Blog
The long-time distributor of THE VAMPIRE’S CRYPT has closed its website. If you would like to read any issue of this fanzine, which contains fiction, interviews, and a detailed book review column, e-mail me to request the desired issue, and I’ll send you a free PDF of it. My e-mail address is at the end of this newsletter. Find information about the contents of each issue on this page of my website:
A complete list of my available works, arranged roughly by genre, with purchase links (gradually being updated as the Amber Quill and Ellora’s Cave works are being republished):
For anyone who would like to read previous issues of this newsletter, they’re posted on my website here (starting from January 2018):
This is my Facebook author page. Please visit!
Facebook
Here’s my page in Barnes and Noble’s Nook store:
Barnes and Noble
Here’s the list of my Kindle books on Amazon. (The final page, however, includes some Ellora’s Cave anthologies in which I don’t have stories):
Carter Kindle Books
Here’s a shortcut URL to my author page on Amazon:
Amazon
My Goodreads page:
Goodreads
Best wishes to all for your favorite winter holidays!
As you probably know, Yahoo Groups will cease to exist in mid-December. Therefore, this will be the last newsletter distributed through the mailing list. It will continue to appear on my website every month here:
I’ll announce the release of each issue on my author Facebook page, cited above. Please “Like” it so you won’t miss any announcements. Thanks!
Speaking of the holiday season, I haven’t written any specifically Christmas-themed novels, although my vampire novel CHILD OF TWILIGHT (now incorporated in the self-published, two-novel omnibus TWILIGHT’S CHANGELINGS) is set in December. My one actual Yuletide story, “Little Cat Feet,” inspired by the legends of animals talking on Christmas Eve, appears in my story collection DAME ONYX TREASURES: LOVE AMONG THE MONSTERS:
In the excerpt below, the teenage runaway protagonist has just saved a stray cat from a pair of hoodlums.
This month’s interview brings a delightful blast from the past for me, a discussion with fantasy author Katherine X. Rylien, who had several stories in my long-ago fanzine, THE VAMPIRE’S CRYPT. To download a free copy of her story collection, VAMPIRE DREAMS, visit here:
*****
Interview with Katherine X. Rylien:
What inspired you to begin writing?
I write for the same reason I read—to visit a world that’s more interesting, more satisfying, than everyday life. For escape and adventure. When I was a kid, I used to read paperbacks in class. They were usually confiscated by the teacher. I found that if I scribbled in a notebook instead, I could get away with that, especially if I glanced up occasionally with a thoughtful expression.
What genres do you work in?
Most of what I write falls into the fantasy category. I love writing about vampires, and they tend to creep into storylines that didn’t originally include them.
Do you outline, “wing it,” or something in between?
Definitely wing it. When I get to the end of a longer work, I have to do an after-the-fact outline to figure out what the book is about. Inevitably, I have to cut scenes that I love but that don’t contribute to the plot, which is where some of my short stories come from.
What have been the major influences on your writing (favorite authors, life experiences, or whatever)?
I’m going to focus on the writers who formed my thinking about vampirism. Fred Saberhagen’s Dracula series made a big impression on me. He writes about a vampire who is neither good nor evil, a mostly sympathetic character who follows his own moral code, but is capable of violence when he deems it appropriate. I also loved Anne Rice’s vampire books, particular the early ones, and George R. R. Martin’s Fevre Dream.
What kind of vampires do you write about?
My vampires were once normal human beings, before being converted through blood intimacies. They can’t turn into bats, wolves or mist, although they are able to enter locked buildings by melting through a wall or door (there’s no supernatural force preventing them from entering a dwelling without invitation). They have their own culture and laws, which differ from one group to another. Subsisting mostly on animal blood, they feed on humans in two distinct circumstances; gently and with restraint, as their primary form of lovemaking—or as a blood sport, in which a group of vampires chases down a warmblooded enemy, draining and then decapitating their quarry to prevent any unintended conversion.
How did you become interested in vampires, and what about them particularly appeals to you?
I can remember being around ten years old and seeing a black-and-white Dracula movie at the Little Art Theater. Walking home in the darkness, I decided I wanted to be a vampire. I used to walk past an abandoned house at night in the hope that one might come out and bite me, and I made a coffin out of an old banana crate which I lined with a cut-up sleeping bag. I liked the idea of staying out all night and doing what I pleased. Immortality, that’s a big selling point, along with strength and speed and supernatural abilities. Once I hit adolescence, the erotic aspect helped maintain my interest.
Please tell us about the contents of your story collection. Also, why did you decide to release it as a free e-book?
Vampire Dreams consists of eight short stories, six of which involve vampires. The other two, I’d describe as dark fantasy. I mostly want people to read it! I’d rather have a hundred people download it for free than sell half-a dozen copies and end up with lunch money.
What do you see as the particular challenges in writing short-form fiction?
I find short stories much easier than a novel, but they require discipline and attention to detail. A clumsy line in a three-page story does more damage than it would on page 152 of a novel. If you’ve made it that far into the book, you’re probably caught up in the story and might not even notice. Or so we hope.
Did you have help with formatting, etc., or do it all on your own? What advice do you have on this and other issues for authors who consider self-publishing?
I love Smashwords, which is where I published Vampire Dreams. They have a style guide which makes the formatting requirements very clear. Fair disclosure, I work in IT, so I’m used to parsing instruction manuals. My advice is, download the style guide and give it a shot, but if it gets too frustrating and you’re not having fun anymore, pay someone to do it for you. The site maintains a list of people who do that, mostly for under $100. One reason I love Smashwords is that they clearly want you to succeed.
What are you working on now?
I’m currently putting the finishing touches on my book, Blood Relations:
Renee lives surrounded by ghosts that are produced by a cotemporal field—an invention of her ancestor, Larson, who vanished over a hundred years earlier. This technology encompasses a limited form of time travel, allowing Larson’s descendants to visit alternate versions of the past or future, often without realizing it. Exploring the strange properties of her ancestral home, Renee learns to travel between timelines by an act of will, which leads her to develop other unusual abilities.
Renee’s extended family seldom leave their property, with the exception of Uncle Wilbur, a vampire. Inspired by his example, Renee visits Abbey Keep, a vampire enclave, where she finds it difficult to resist the seductive allure of the inhabitants. When the Keep is threatened by vampire hunters, she’s recruited by Lord Stephan Kiernan to use her unique talents in its defense. It gets personal when Larson escapes the cotemporal field and joins the battle on the side of Abbey Keep’s enemies.
Blood Relations will be released as a free e-book, sometime in the next few months. If you’d like be notified when it’s available for download, make a free account on smashwords.com, and subscribe to updates on my author’s page. Or you can contact me at katherine.rylien@gmail.com.
What advice would you give to aspiring writers?
Read. Write. Then read some more. I’ve been inspired by excellent writing, and also by questionable prose that left me thinking, “I can do better than this.” Sometimes by the same author, and even within the same book.
*****
Some Books I’ve Read Lately:
THE MIDNIGHT BARGAIN, by C. L. Polk. This fantasy novel takes place in an early-industrial world reminiscent of a Jane Austen novel. Upper-class characters are preoccupied with making ideal marriages for their offspring, for the social and financial benefit of the family. The heroine, Beatrice, knows about the financial troubles arising from her father’s speculative investments. Her awareness of the family’s need for her to marry well becomes urgent when she learns her father has mortgaged their estate to finance her first “bargaining season,” the social whirl in which men seek brides. Young women have to be shown to their best advantage while navigating excruciatingly complex etiquette standards. Her younger sister’s future, too, depends on her performance. All this tension is exacerbated by the importance of magic, which in this world is accomplished by making bargains with spirits. Only men and unmarried women can practice sorcery, and women are allowed to bond only with lesser spirits. In Beatrice’s country, all married women wear collars to suppress their magic, because a spirit can enter an unborn baby. Such a child is born essentially demon-possessed and can’t be cured but must be destroyed. Women are valued not for their own magical talent but for their capacity to bear sorcerer sons. Beatrice doesn’t want to get married and lose her magic to a collar. She wants to remain a spinster, helping her father with the financial side of his business. Having learned to read the cryptic codes in women-authored grimoires, she has been collecting them in secret, hoping to forge a pact with a greater spirit. When she meets a foreign visitor, Ysbeta, in the city for the bargaining season, Beatrice learns both of them have similar dreams. Ysbeta wants to travel the world seeking out occult knowledge and promulgating it to women everywhere. At first rivals in the quest for a certain tome, they become friends and covert experimenters together. Beatrice summons and bonds with a lesser spirit as a preliminary to the greater conjuration. At the same time, however, she meets Ysbeta’s brother, Ianthe (didn’t the author know that Greek name is feminine?), the one man Beatrice realizes she could love. In his country, women wear collars only when pregnant or trying to conceive. She can’t imagine accepting even this limitation, though. Meanwhile, other young gentlemen pursue both her and Ysbeta. Beatrice becomes fond of her spirit companion, but that doesn’t alter the inconvenient fact that the entity is capricious and impulsive. One social faux pas and near-exposure after another ramps up the tension, while Beatrice is ever more intensely pressured to choose a husband. The conflicts rise to a cumulative disaster both magical and familial. The worldbuilding is fascinating, and Beatrice’s plight kept me riveted as the author creates mounting suspense about how she could possibly reconcile ambition with love. The parallels to restrictions imposed on women in our culture not so long ago (and to some extent still) are obvious. In the epilogue, we see Beatrice and Ianthe leading a movement reminiscent of the real-world campaign for women’s suffrage.
A DOG’S PERFECT CHRISTMAS, by W. Bruce Cameron. To appreciate this novel, there’s no need to have read the author’s prior dog books. This feel-good family story stands alone, unrelated to other works such as A DOG’S PURPOSE. There’s less dog-viewpoint content than in the other two I read (told entirely in the first person by a dog), and it may be stretching a point to claim the puppy saves the family, as implied in the cover blurb. The puppy, however, does serve as a catalyst to stir the human characters out of their near-despair and set them on the path to renewal of loving bonds despite the adversity they face. Widower Sandor Goss and his elderly wolfhound live with Sandor’s son’s family. Mired in depression, Sandor does little except sit in his room, having no meaningful interaction with his son Hunter, his daughter-in-law Juliana, or their children, eighth-grader Ello and twin three-year-old boys (who converse in their private gibberish that only Ello can translate most of the time). Hunter confronts a disaster at work when his pet project goes wrong in a darkly humorous way. Overwhelmed by the twins and missing her career as a trial attorney, Juliana announces she’s unhappy in the marriage and wants major changes. Ello has entered the adolescent stage of fraught relationships with both her parents and her classmates. At one point, Sandor contemplates suicide. All these troubles build to an acute crisis when Juliana falls critically ill and has to be hospitalized. Around the same time, Ello picks up an abandoned puppy whom she names Ruby. In the midst of the havoc, the obvious step of taking Ruby to the animal shelter keeps getting put off, until it’s tacitly accepted that she will stay. The necessity of keeping the household functional, with the addition of a new pet, the absence of the mother, and Hunter constantly at the office, forces the family to work together. Sandor emerges from his isolation and bonds with his granddaughter. He even takes the two dogs to the dog park, where he meets a bevy of widowed ladies who show inordinate interest in him. The canine-viewpoint scenes, although occupying far less space than the human-centered passages, are warmly engaging. The author allows ample space to explore every human character’s perspective (well, except the three-year-old boys), so that we sympathize with all of them even while they clash with each other. The story concludes, of course, with Christmas and a sentimental yet realistic and well-earned happy ending. For readers who can’t stand to see animals die in fiction, I’m happy to report that the old dog survives the book, contrary to my apprehensions.
KITTY’S MIX-TAPE, a collection of short fiction by Carrie Vaughn. Readers can appreciate many of these stories set in the world of Kitty Norville, werewolf late-night radio host, without having read the novels. The tales cover a wide range of locations and eras. The side adventures about secondary characters—vampires, werewolves, selkies, magicians—don’t require any background to understand, although of course past acquaintance with some of them would enhance one’s enjoyment. Even the pieces featuring Kitty herself include enough context to enable a new reader to understand what’s going on. Although I haven’t read several later books in the series, I didn’t have any trouble following the plots and characters. In fact, after finishing the collection I was inspired to buy the final novel, KITTY SAVES THE WORLD, which I found thoroughly absorbing. The works in this collection, the majority of them new to me, are mostly reprinted from a variety of sources; however, four are original to this volume. So fans of Carrie Vaughn will definitely want this book, while new readers might find it an accessible, intriguing introduction to Kitty and her companions and foes.
THE ANGEL OF THE CROWS, by Katherine Addison. This very unusual variation on Sherlock Holmes takes place in an alternate Victorian England where supernatural creatures such as angels, demons, and vampires, among others, live alongside ordinary people. There’s no hint that the angels are celestial beings; they seem more like an alien species. Angels in good standing, so to speak, have ties to particular places. Their less respectable kin, the Nameless (who belong nowhere and therefore have no names) and the Fallen (self-explanatory) provoke wariness and, in the case of the latter, justified fear and revulsion. Angels don’t eat, drink, excrete, or sleep, and they don’t share most human emotions. The Holmes character, an angel called Crow, formerly Nameless, channels his insatiable curiosity about the human condition into investigating mysteries and helping the police at their request if an offered case interests him enough. The Watson character, former military physician Dr. Doyle, narrates in first person. His given names remain unrevealed until well into the story. He has secrets quite apart from his difficulty in fitting into normal society after the harrowing experience in Afghanistan that has left him partially disabled. He moves in with Crow to share lodging expenses, as Watson and Holmes do in the original. Although human feelings remain largely opaque to Crow, whose personality echoes the classic Holmes’s arrogant confidence in his own intellectual superiority, he and Doyle gradually form a close bond. The various episodes of the novel comprise variations on the best-known Holmes stories, beginning with “A Study in Scarlet” and including the tale featuring Mary Moran (which doesn’t end the way a devoted reader of the original work would expect). Paranormal and preternatural creatures and phenomena transform the plots and pervade the world of the novel. Crow and Doyle, while reflecting the traits of their prototypes, come across as deeply engaging characters with their own personalities. At least one Amazon reader review complains this book is too blatantly a Sherlock Holmes pastiche. That’s a feature I love about it. In my opinion, most fans of both Holmes and urban fantasy would agree.
*****
Excerpt from “Little Cat Feet”:
A female voice said, “This way. Quickly, before those two catch up with you.”
Lauren looked frantically from side to side, searching for the woman who’d spoken.
The cat trotted back to her and rubbed insistently against her leg. “Get up! What are you waiting for? Follow me.” She headed for the alley’s outlet again.
Okay, that cat did not talk. I’m dreaming or losing my mind.
Nevertheless, the animal acted as if it wanted to lead Lauren somewhere, and it wasn’t like she had a better plan. She hauled herself to her feet and hurried after her feline guide. Around the back of the rowhouse that marked one side of the alley, the cat led her to a stoop and a boarded-up door. Behind the boards, the door stood an inch or two ajar. Picking its way up the three concrete steps, the cat nudged a spot where the planks had been broken to create a narrow opening.
“You should be able to fit through this hole, just barely,” the female voice said.
Not the cat. Definitely not. There must be some crazy bag lady ventriloquist hanging around.
The cat disappeared into the house. Kneeling on the stoop, Lauren stretched one arm through the gap. Maybe she could squeeze in there. Just barely, as her guide had said. The sound of the boys’ voices, louder and closer, made her decision for her. She pulled on the splintered plank to widen the hole. After pushing her backpack inside, easing the door open farther in the process, she lay on her stomach and wiggled through the narrow space. Once she turned on her side to fit her shoulders in, she didn’t have much trouble getting the rest of her body through. The boards closed on her like pincers. Luckily, she had layers of clothes to keep her from getting scraped raw. Her heart raced in panic when her hips got stuck.
“Faster,” the guiding voice hissed.
She held her breath and scrambled faster. At last she got her legs and feet inside. She pushed the door closed and lay, panting, in the dark on a gritty, musty-smelling floor.
“Those filthy males won’t suspect you’ve hidden here. They’ll hardly notice an opening much too small for them to use.”
Lauren sat up and braced her back against the nearest wall. Dainty paws walked across her legs to her lap. She reached out and ran her fingertips over the cat’s wet fur. “I can’t imagine how you knew to lead me here, but thanks, I guess. I wonder how those guys ever managed to catch a smart animal like you.”
The cat snorted. “They tricked me with food. I should have known better. Their scent is so foul I should have run the moment I smelled them. I’ll never be so foolish again.” A lapping sound suggested she was grooming herself. “By the way, you don’t happen to have any food, do you?”
Lightheaded, Lauren shook her head and blinked a couple of times. In the pitch dark, that gesture didn’t accomplish anything. “You’re really talking, aren’t you?”
“Do you see anyone else here?” The cat’s dry tone had a sardonic edge. “Oh, I forgot, your human eyes can’t see anything at the moment. At any rate, thank you for rescuing me.” She stretched, her front claws kneading Lauren’s jeans. “Not that I wouldn’t have escaped on my own eventually, of course.”
-end-
*****
My Publishers:
Writers Exchange E-Publishing: Writers Exchange
Harlequin: Harlequin
Whiskey Creek: Whiskey Creek
Wild Rose Press: Wild Rose Press
You can contact me at: MLCVamp@aol.com
“Beast” wishes until next time—
Margaret L. Carter