Archive for the ‘News’ Category
Welcome to the May 2018 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):
This is my Facebook author page. Please visit!
Facebook
Here’s my page in Barnes and Noble’s Nook store. These items include some of the short stories that used to be on Fictionwise:
Barnes and Noble
Go here and scroll down to “Available Short Fiction” for a list of those stories with their Amazon links:
Kindle Works
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 light paranormal romance novella “Yokai Magic,” which draws on Japanese folklore, has been accepted for e-book publication. A teaser of the opening scene appears below.
This month’s interview features fantasy and paranormal romance author Lexi George.
*****
Interview with Lexi George:
What inspired you to begin writing?
Books! I grew up in the country with no close siblings and no neighbors to play with, so books were my companions and playmates. I wanted to write the kind of stories I love, stories that provide laughter and romance and escape.
What genres do you work in?
I write Southern-fried paranormal romance as Lexi George about hunky immortal demon hunters who come to the Deep South and fall in love . . . with sassy Southern women, of course! The first book in the series is called Demon Hunting in Dixie. Each of the romances is a stand-alone story about a couple, with roaming secondary characters that float in and out of the books. The town is a character and there are lots of zany secondary characters and paranormal critters.
I also write traditional fantasy under the pen name Alexandra Rushe. The fantasy series is called Fledgling Magic and is set in the imaginary world of Tandara, where magic and monsters are real. The first book in the series is called A Meddle of Wizards. The series tells of the adventures—or, more accurately, the misadventures—of Raine Stewart, a young woman who gets sucked through a portal into another world populated by warriors, wizards, and monsters. There is an evil wizard (of course!) and Raine discovers she has powers of her own. Unfortunately, she stinks at magic and has a lot to learn.
Do you outline, “wing it,” or something in between?
I’m a plotser, a combination of a pantser and a plotter. Mostly, I make stuff up as I go, but some part of my brain is swirling while I write (the plotting part) to tie up the loose ends. It’s an agonizing process, if you can call it that!
What have been the major influences on your writing (favorite authors, life experiences, or whatever)?
I have always loved myths and fairy tales. I loved The Hobbit and David Eddings’ Belgariad series, but I’m also a big romance reader. I discovered Georgette Heyer in the seventh grade and was hooked. Oh, and The Wizard of Oz was another favorite. George R.R. Martin’s Game of Thrones made a huge impression on me, although my voice is more funny than dark. I admire his world-building tremendously and his ability to write memorable characters . . . and kill them off. The man is ruthless in that regard. 😊
What effect has your legal career had on your fiction, if any?
I think being a lawyer has sharpened my analytical and critical thinking skills, which are assets to any writer. Also, I am a linear writer, meaning, I start at the beginning and plow to the end of the book, like an old mule. This habit, I suspect, comes from writing legal briefs. In law, you don’t have the luxury of endless drafts, because of court deadlines.
How did you go about creating your fictional town of Hannah, Alabama? Do you maintain background material such as maps, timelines, etc.?
Hannah is an amalgamation of the small town I grew up in and the small town where I presently reside. I took the river, the rolling hills, and the meteorite crater from the town where I currently live and smacked them down in South Alabama. A total fabrication, as South Alabama is flat as a flitter and has no hills. As for keeping things straight, I maintain a character bible for both series, or I would never remember it all. There are five books in the demon hunter series and a novella, and two books in the fantasy series. I’d be lost without a bible, because the worlds and characters have grown so large. When I started writing the fantasy, I sketched out a map of the world for my own use. It is pathetic. I can’t draw stick people, but it served the purpose.
What is your latest or next-forthcoming book (or both)?
Book five of the demon hunter series, Demon Hunting with a Sexy Ex, came out in September of 2017 and A Meddle of Wizards, book one of the Fledgling Magic series, was released January 9, 2018. Book two of the fantasy, A Muddle of Magic, comes out in October.
What are you working on now?
I am currently writing Demon Hunting with a Southern Sheriff, book six of the demon hunter series! It’s the story of Dev Whitsun, the sheriff in my small town. Poor Dev has his hands full, what with demons, demon hunters, rogue gods, shifters, and an animated statue named Jeb, who tromps around singing standards from the 1890’s at the top of his lungs and whacking bad guys with his metal peanut. Jeb encouraged local farmers to plant goobers instead of cotton, saving them from ruination, and the grateful town erected a statue in his honor. You can see, though, why a roving statue would be troublesome to my sheriff. He has a tricky job, maintain harmony between the norms and the supernatural denizens in his district.
What advice would you give to aspiring writers?
Write! Every writer has a voice, and you can’t find your voice if you don’t write. Talking about writing, plotting, outlining, color-coding, indexing, and story-boarding are all well and good, but they don’t get the job done. A story is created one word at a time. You wouldn’t expect to be a concert pianist after one lesson, would you? Or receive an invitation to Wimbleton after one afternoon on the tennis court. Writing is like anything else worthwhile. It’s hard work and it takes time and discipline. Make yourself sit down and write. Be selfish. Make time for your writing, whether it’s late at night, lunch hours, or before work. Writing is the only way to become a writer! Oh, and take craft classes or read a good book on writing. Join a critique group, either in person or on-line. Feedback is essential and so is constructive criticism. Very few good books are written in a complete vacuum.
What’s the URL of your website? Your blog? Where else can we find you on the web?
You can find me at Lexi George or Alexandra Rushe.
Thanks so much for the interview, Margaret. I have loved being here!
*****
Some Books I’ve Read Lately:
IN THE FOREST OF FORGETTING, by Theodora Goss. A 2006 collection of stories first published in various fantasy venues, by the author of THE STRANGE CASE OF THE ALCHEMIST’S DAUGHTER. Goss often draws upon fairy tales for her plots and, born in Hungary and having spent much of her childhood in Europe, sets several tales in her homeland. A few highlights: “The Rose in Twelve Petals,” in an alternate-history version of Europe, retells “Sleeping Beauty” with a fresh viewpoint on the motives of the witch who places the curse on the princess. “Letters from Budapest” features an artist and a sort of psychic vampire who feeds on creativity. “In the Forest of Forgetting” frames a woman’s cancer as a journey in search of her own identity through a forest where she meets a series of archetypal persons. “Sleeping with Bears” narrates a wedding between a young woman and a bear as a series of vignettes in a tone that portrays the existence of talking, sapient bears as ordinary and unexceptional, with the marriage itself presented as a rather strange cross-cultural union but not outright shocking. Three stories, “Miss Emily Gray,” “Conrad,” and “Lessons with Miss Gray,” feature the titular nanny, governess, and/or witch as an anti-Mary-Poppins who grants wishes in a uniquely skewed way. In “The Wings of Meister Wilhelm,” the young girl narrator becomes involved in her music teacher’s ambition to build a glider and fly to a legendary floating island in the sky. The mother of the protagonist of “Pip and the Fairies” became famous as author of a series of children’s fantasy stories; after her mother’s death, Pip rediscovers her own past and of course awakens to the forgotten reality of the fairy tales.
THE HAZEL WOOD, by Melissa Albert. A mind-blowing entry in my favorite fantasy subgenre, portal fantasy. Seventeen-year-old Alice’s grandmother, Althea Proserpine, whom she has never met, wrote one collection of fairy tales that became a cult classic, then withdrew from the world to her estate, the Hazel Wood (named after a line in a poem by Yeats). Ella, Alice’s mother, never talks about Althea or the father of whom Alice knows nothing. Ella and Alice have kept constantly on the move, fleeing the bad luck that seems to plague them and everyone around them. The book, TALES FROM THE HINTERLAND, is almost impossible to find; Alice got a brief glimpse of a copy before her mother took it from her. At the age of six, Alice was temporarily abducted by a mysterious, redheaded man who claimed to come from the Hinterland. Ella, by the time she receives word of Althea’s death, has married a well-to-do man with a teenage daughter, and Alice is attending an exclusive school. She even has a part-time job and a friend or two. Soon after the surprising news about Althea, Ella and her husband and stepdaughter vanish. When father and daughter reappear within a few days, refusing to discuss what happened to them, Alice’s stepfather throws her out of the house. She resolves to track down her missing mother. To do that, she feels she must find her grandmother’s home, the Hazel Wood, but the only clues to its location are in an old magazine article about Althea. Alice has to turn for help to her classmate Ellery Finch, an obsessive fan of TALES FROM THE HINTERLAND, which he actually read multiple times before having his copy stolen. On their road trip, Alice and Ellery become friends or perhaps something more, while occasionally glimpsing people who seem to step out of the pages of Althea’s dark fairy tales. Ellery tells Alice a couple of the stories, their tone and contents a blend of numinous and creepy. After discovering Ellery’s ulterior motive for coming with her, Alice does find the Hazel Wood and from there, of course, makes her way into the Hinterland. She also learns the truth about her own past. I wish Melissa Albert would write and publish TALES FROM THE HINTERLAND itself, considering the evocative titles of the stories she mentions but doesn’t elaborate on.
AFTER THE END OF THE WORLD, by Jonathan L. Howard. The title makes this sound like a very short book! Actually, it’s the sequel to CARTER & LOVECRAFT (sic), in which Daniel Carter, a descendant of Randolph Carter (protagonist of H. P. Lovecraft’s THE DREAM-QUEST OF UNKNOWN KADATH and several short stories) co-inherited a bookshop with Emily Lovecraft, a mixed-race collateral descendant of HPL. They now find themselves in the Unfolded World, an alternate reality where the former city of Providence is now Arkham, and most if not all of Lovecraft’s fiction is based on fact. Worse, in this timeline the German Reich demolished the Soviet Union in an atomic bomb strike on Moscow in 1941. The Nazis still rule much of Europe, and the Cold War pits the Reich against the U.S. and its allies. The Holocaust as we know it never happened; the victims of the equivalent extermination program were Communists and other “degenerates” the West didn’t care about. The state of Israel exists on the island of Madagascar. As an oddly negative side effect of not having six million Jews slaughtered, the revulsion against racism that followed the war in our timeline never happened in the Unfolded World. Casual, widely accepted antisemitism is accompanied by prejudice against other ethnic groups. So Emily has to live with racism more blatant than in the world she’s used to. Moreover, to both Emily and Daniel, as well as Detective Martin Harrelson of the Arkham police department, the only other refugee from the folded world, it feels viscerally wrong to accept a Nazi regime as a normal, if distrusted, player on the international stage. But Carter and Lovecraft still have a living to make and a detective agency and a rare-books shop, respectively, to run. A man named Weston hires Daniel to investigate irregularities in a high-energy physics project at Miskatonic University. Meanwhile, Emily acquires a copy of the NECRONOMICON and gets drawn into its arcane lore. Daniel is plagued by eldritch dreams. They end up joining an expedition to a research base on an otherwise uninhabited island near Alaska. Crossing paths with German agents, members of the occult Thule society, British commandos (pleasantly surprised that Daniel has read the relatively obscure spy thriller series by that chap Ian Fleming), and an alien species, they play a role in averting a cosmic catastrophe. The end of the novel finds them back in Arkham, resuming what passes for normal life. I’d love to see another book in this series, and the last page of the novel does conclude with what might be a potential sequel hook.
MOTHER GOOSE REFIGURED, by Christine A. Jones. This new (2016) translation of Charles Perrault’s STORIES OR TALES OF THE PAST, otherwise known as the Mother Goose fairy tales, is preceded by a detailed introduction on the topics of Perrault’s life and times in the reign of Louis XIV of France, an analysis of “Cinderella” as one of the best-known and most popularly influential stories (especially in its “Disneyfied” version), and the roles of female characters in several other fairy tales. The main introduction is followed by “Notes on Editions, Translations, and Interpretations,” an essay on the texts and their cultural influences, as well as a discussion of the editor’s translation choices. Jones aims to make the tales fresh for modern readers by increased accuracy to the original and a faithful reflection of the witty allusions and double entendres the French audience of the late seventeenth century would have noticed. The language sounds both colloquial and sharply pointed, and the verse morals at the ends of the stories come across as slyly ironic rather than simplistic. Extensive footnotes explain why certain phrases are translated the way they are and situate them in their cultural context. We discover that Perrault’s tales don’t simply transcribe timeless folk narratives but rather address the delicate problems of young people, especially women, navigating the pitfalls of French society in that era. Unlike the Grimm brothers’ encyclopedic compilation, Perrault’s collection comprises only eight stories. They include, however, several classics in their versions best-known to modern audiences, such as “Cinderella,” “Sleeping Beauty,” and “Little Red Riding Hood.” One device by which Jones de-familiarizes the tales is to translate their titles anew, more faithfully to the original language; thus, “Sleeping Beauty” becomes “The Beauty in the Slumbering Woodland” and “Cinderella” becomes “Ashkins; or, The Little Slipper of Glass.” The book concludes with a long annotated bibliography.
*****
Excerpt from “Yokai Magic”:
Dust and cobwebs coated the box marked, “Granddad’s mementos from Korea.” Climbing onto a stepstool, Val swept away the mess with a broom before lifting the box down. It had probably sat undisturbed on the basement shelf since her family had bought the house, when she’d been twelve years old. She lugged her find upstairs and set it on a newspaper spread on the kitchen table. Her cat leaped onto the chair next to hers and stared as if supervising the job. With a paring knife, she slit the crumbling tape that barely sealed the box top.
After pulling out handfuls of wadded-up packing paper, she came upon a pile of letters with exotic stamps and a military return address. A separately bound bundle of envelopes looked like her grandmother’s reply letters. Val squashed the temptation to start reading them on the spot. If what she needed wasn’t loose in the box, she would riffle through the envelopes. From another nest of paper, she dug out a porcelain figurine of a white, green-eyed Japanese good-luck cat wearing a red scarf around its neck. She set the statuette on the table. The next layer in the box revealed a cylindrical package swathed in plastic wrap.
What’s this? A picture of some kind? As she sliced open the wrapping, the knife slipped. The blade nicked her finger, and a drop of blood fell onto the package. That’ll teach me to use scissors next time. She dug a tissue out of her jeans pocket and wrapped her fingertip. For a second her vision blurred. What’s that about? Too long since lunch? The weird sensation faded, and she dismissed it from her mind.
To her relief, when she stripped the wrapping off the package, she found only a barely visible bloodstain on the very edge of the object inside—a Japanese painted scroll. After shoving aside the heap of mail and the porcelain cat, she unrolled the scroll on the kitchen table. It portrayed a small, red building with a freestanding, rectangular arch in front and a peaked roof. Maybe a shrine? A slender, white cat adorned with a red scarf resembling the one on the figurine sat in a demure pose in front of the gate. In the background, next to a flowering cherry tree and a sketchy outline of a stream, hovered a figure of a woman in a lavender, floral-printed kimono. She wore a scarf like the cat’s around her neck and a large, black ring on her left hand. A column of Japanese characters ran down the upper right side of the picture.
Val rubbed behind the ears of the long-haired, charcoal-and-silver tabby sprawled on the adjacent chair. “What do you think, Toby? Could I sell this for a small fortune and get the roof replaced?” Her pet blinked at her. “No, that’s what I thought.”
She sighed over the pile of mail. Sure, it would be interesting to read the letters her grandfather had written during his Army service in Korea in 1951, but would one of those envelopes contain what she was looking for? She’d hauled the stuff upstairs in search of a receipt for two Japanese ivory figurines that had adorned the fireplace mantel for as long as she could remember. Much as she hated the thought of giving them up, the websites she’d checked suggested their value would take a healthy bite out of the roof cost. She couldn’t legally sell ivory, though, without proof Granddad had owned it before the ban on possessing it had existed.
After popping into the ground-floor half-bath to bandage her finger, she returned to the kitchen to finish emptying the box. It took her a minute to notice something missing from the table. “Hey, what happened to the cat statuette?” She glanced at Toby as if he might have an answer. He leaped to the floor and strolled away, plumed tail waving. With a shrug, Val peered into the box, in case she’d replaced the figurine in it without thinking. “Not there. Then where did I put it?” She flipped through the remaining papers, although there wasn’t enough debris left to hide the object. She glanced at the floor, where she would have seen obvious shards of porcelain if he had knocked the thing off the table. “Hope I’m not losing my mind. I might need it again.” Ridiculous. If I were going to have hallucinations, I wouldn’t start by imagining random Asian artifacts. Better quit for now. Definitely way past dinnertime. She stowed the items back in the box for safekeeping and cleaned off the table, then rummaged in the refrigerator for leftovers to heat up.
-end of excerpt-
*****
My Publishers:
Writers Exchange E-Publishing: Writers Exchange
Harlequin: Harlequin
Hard Shell Word Factory: Hard Shell
Whiskey Creek: Whiskey Creek
You can contact me at: MLCVamp@aol.com
“Beast” wishes until next time—
Margaret L. Carter
Welcome to the April 2018 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):
This is my Facebook author page. Please visit!
Facebook
Here’s my page in Barnes and Noble’s Nook store. These items include some of the short stories that used to be on Fictionwise:
Barnes and Noble
Go here and scroll down to “Available Short Fiction” for a list of those stories with their Amazon links:
Kindle Works
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
Interested in horror-related artwork and wallpaper? On this site, you can find over 155,000 free eerie, enchanting horror images:
Free Horror Art
I’ve released a Kindle collection of fantasy stories, HARVEST OF MAGIC, mainly comprising fiction by my husband, Leslie Roy Carter, and me first published in the webzines SORCEROUS SIGNALS and LORELEI SIGNAL:
One story, “Stalking Wild Magic,” has never appeared anywhere before. Like a couple of other pieces in the volume, it’s a spinoff from our “Wild Sorceress” series but can be read on its own. An excerpt appears below.
This month I’m interviewing romance and urban fantasy author Chandelle LaVaun.
*****
Interview with Chandelle LaVaun:
What inspired you to begin writing?
My cousin Candace. Almost a decade ago. We loved reading the same books—Twilight, Cassandra Clare’s Mortal Instruments, JR Ward’s black dagger brotherhood—we would discuss them for hours. One day she told me she was starting to write one of her own. I was so impressed I wanted to try too. I’d always had these stories going on in my head, it was my cousin who helped me get them out.
What genres do you work in?
Right now I’m focusing on YA urban fantasy. But I also write adult paranormal romance and contemporary romance. I’ve even got an idea for Middle Grade.
Do you outline, “wing it,” or something in between?
I have extreme OCD. I outline, but they’re like mini synopsis for each scene. I write down every thought in my brain for each scene so I don’t forget it…but it’s more like guidelines. I let the story morph freely then adapt.
What have been the major influences on your writing (favorite authors, life experiences, or whatever)?
JR Ward, Cassandra Clare, LJ Smith, Rick Riordan, Kresley Cole…and my first favorite author, Agatha Christie. But mostly, I’d have to say Harry Potter. Just knowing one person’s imagination could give the world something we cherish so dearly makes me want to give it a try. I know I won’t reach her level, but if I could give a handful of readers a fun escape then I’m happy.
Has your background in art and fashion design affected your writing? If so, how?
I spent 7 years in a fine arts program; this kind of training really enhanced my photographic brain. I see my stories in vivid images in my head so when I’m describing it I can actually see it—I think this helps me give detailed descriptions. I want my readers to see it as clearly as I do. Also, I think my visual arts and fashion design background allowed me to see not only the world, but individual people through a variety of telescopes. I’ve known so many types of people and personalities, I’ve seen firsthand wild wardrobes and bold styles. All of this enhances the worlds I create.
How does the magic system in your fiction work? How did you come up with this approach?
I mixed many different types of magic… the traditional kind we see in fantasy books with spells and fun gifts. The realistic kind that some people (myself included) practice in the real world—like with crystals, herbs, and moon phases, etc. but then I also used the really fun kind where my characters can affect the elements, because this is really everyone’s wish. Lol.
What is your latest or next-forthcoming book (or both)?
At the end of February I released book 1 in my Elemental Magic series, The Lost Witch. Book 2—The Brave Witch—is releasing March 29th, and book 3 at the end of April. I hope to keep this pattern up through summer.
What are you working on now?
I just started book 3, The Rebel Witch, in the same series.
What advice would you give to aspiring writers?
Just like the pirate’s code, writing rules are more like guidelines. Lol. Study the genre you want to write, read as many of those books as you can. Write something that’s in your heart but is also popular in the market. And write FAST.
But honestly, my best advice is to make writer friends. I would be lost without mine, lost and insane. My career wouldn’t exist without the help of my friends Megan Elizabeth, Michelle Madow, and Linsey Hall. I’m not even exaggerating. So I highly, highly recommend finding some writer friends of your own. Go to book conferences like RWA and RT (among many, many others) and learn everything you possibly can and then make friends with the people around you! They may change your life 🙂
What’s the URL of your website? Your blog? Where else can we find you on the web?
My website is ChanelleLaVaun.com
If you sign up for my newsletter you get a FREE prequel novella to my Elemental Magic series! Also, you can sign up for my review team. 🙂
Or find me:
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Chandelle LaVaun Street Team
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Twitter @chandellelavaun
Pinterest.com/chandellelavaun
*****
Some Books I’ve Read Lately:
ENLIGHTENMENT NOW, by Steven Pinker, is psychologist Pinker’s follow-up to his 2011 book THE BETTER ANGELS OF OUR NATURE: WHY VIOLENCE HAS DECLINED. In that earlier work, he demonstrated with page after page of hard facts that we’re living in the least violent period in recorded history. ENLIGHTENMENT NOW, subtitled “The Case for Reason, Science, Humanism, and Progress,” expands that project to support the claim that human well-being has increased in virtually every measurable way since the dawn of the Enlightenment in the seventeenth to eighteenth centuries. (I have to confess that I bristled a bit at the title itself, since “Enlightenment,” like “Renaissance,” was a self-designated and overstated, self-serving label meant to dismiss previous eras as centuries of benighted superstition, barbarism, and stagnation.) Contrary to the widespread belief that the world is going to Hell in a handbasket, according to Pinker this is the best time in history to be born, even in third-world nations. The headlines that give the opposite impression represent, in Pinker’s view, a distortion of the facts. After all, shocking, unusual events make the news. We never see articles headed, “No schools got attacked today.” Health, education, the spread of representative government, overall quality of life (evaluated by leisure time, household conveniences, access to information and entertainment, etc.), among many other metrics, have measurably improved. Fewer children die in childhood, fewer women die in giving birth, many diseases have been conquered or even eradicated, in the U.S. drug addiction and unwed teen pregnancy have decreased, fewer people worldwide live in extreme poverty, and in the developed world even the poorest possess wealth (in the form of clean running water, electricity, and other modern conveniences) that nobody could have at any price a couple of centuries ago. As for violence, Pinker refers in both books to what he calls “The Long Peace,” the period since 1945 in which no major world powers have clashed head-on in war. What about the proxy wars such as the Korean and Vietnam conflicts? Faded away with the Cold War itself. Anarchy and bloody conflicts in third-world countries? While horrible present-day examples can easily be cited, the number of them has also decreased. Pinker also disputes, with supporting figures, the hype about “epidemics” of depression and suicide. We’re misled by psychological phenomena such as the availability heuristic (whatever comes to mind most readily seems more common), the negativity heuristic (for survival-related reasons, negative events stick in our minds better than positive ones), and the ever-popular confirmation bias (we selectively remember and accept facts that support our already established beliefs). Even though I differ with Pinker on a fundamental worldview level—he’s a secular humanist and proud of it—I find his statistics convincing and agree with him at almost every point on the mundane, practical level. I particularly like his championship of reason over the postmodern emphasis on irrational motives and “relative” truth. Recommended for readers seeking grounds for hopefulness in the midst of today’s scary headlines.
PRIDE AND PROMETHEUS, by John Kessel. Remember Mary Bennet, one of the younger sisters in PRIDE AND PREJUDICE? I always thought Jane Austen treated her rather shabbily, portraying her bookish preoccupations and attempts to share (or show off) her learning as objects of mockery rather than sympathy. In Kessel’s novel, set thirteen years after Austen’s, Mary is a young spinster fascinated by fossils. She meets Victor Frankenstein when he travels to the British Isles to create a mate for his creature. The author has to fudge the chronology to have the action of FRANKENSTEIN take place close to the time of its publication rather than in the 1790s, but otherwise he sticks to the “facts” of the two source novels. The third-person sections of the novel from Mary’s viewpoint present her as an intelligent, sympathetic character burdened by difficulty in decoding people’s reactions and navigating social situations (we might diagnose her on the autism spectrum nowadays). Other parts of the story are narrated in first person by Victor and the monster. Mary ends up following Victor to the remote island where he undertakes his second experiment. She and the male creature become traveling companions. In the process, she has to cope first with the limitations her society places on a young, unmarried woman and later with the consequences of being robbed of her money and other trappings of her upper-middle-class status. Along the way to the north of Scotland, she discovers what it’s like to be regarded as a beggar, thief, or half-mad vagrant. In Kessel’s adaptation, Victor later lies about having destroyed the unfinished female creature. She’s completed and brought to life (and inevitably named Eve), and Mary takes on the task of educating her, while her would-be mate impatiently waits on the sidelines for Mary to decide the artificial woman is ready for his courtship. Since Kessel doesn’t change the essential plotline of Shelley’s original work, we know the story has to end tragically for Victor and his two creations. Mary, however, returns home wiser and more confident. In addition to the character interactions, the historical setting, and the skillful merging of the worlds of two very different novels, another point of interest is the presentation of the science of the early nineteenth century as natural philosophers of that period conceived it.
PRINCESS HOLY AURA, by Ryk E. Spoor. You don’t have to be a fan of Magical Girl anime and manga to appreciate this book, but familiarity with the genre would greatly enhance your enjoyment. It’s a lot of fun to see the standard tropes play out in a believable urban fantasy novel. There’s humor, yes, but also suspense, danger, serious choices, and the potential for tragedy. Plus Lovecraftian eldritch abominations. One evening on his walk home from work, Steve Russ, an ordinary American thirty-something bachelor nerd working at a bagel shop, rescues a little boy from a pack of night-gaunts. Afterward, a white rat named Silvertail, actually a wizard from ancient Lemuria, tells him about the millennia-old war against enemies like those and much worse. Silvertail needs a new Mystic Galaxy Defender Princess Holy Aura to lead the Apocalypse Maidens in the current iteration of the conflict. Not willing to recruit yet another innocent teenager for this dangerous role, he asks Steve to become Princess Holy Aura—which requires a transformation into a fourteen-year-old girl. After detailed explanations and much soul-searching, Steve accepts the mission. After it ends, if Princess Holy Aura defeats the enemy and the world survives, Steve and the other Maidens will revert to their normal lives, and everyone will forget the barely-averted apocalypse, including the Maidens themselves. Silvertail promises, however, that Steve will enjoy fulfillment and success forever after. Steve has to leave behind his current life, including his friends in his Dungeons and Dragons group. Even in the first couple of chapters, I found much to like in this novel. Steve weighs about 300 pounds, but he’s not a stereotypical weakling; some of that mass consists of muscle. The D&D scenes are written by an author who clearly understands and appreciates the game; there’s not a trace of sneering condescension. After parting with his friends under the cover story of getting a better job in a distant location, Steve assumes the form of fourteen-year-old Holly. He decides to stay in that shape all the time unless reverting to his male body becomes absolutely necessary, because he wants to live into the role to avoid careless slip-ups. Silvertail poses as his father. The rat can take the form of a man when necessary, but the change requires most of his magic, so he can’t work powerful spells unless he’s in rat shape. Naturally, at first Steve has trouble adjusting to the life of not only a high-school student but a female one. Gradually, though, he becomes so used to inhabiting the Holly persona that he feels emotionally and physically uncomfortable on the few occasions he has to become Steve again. The gender-bending dimension of the story is highlighted by the use of feminine pronouns for the protagonist whenever he/she is Holly. Holly makes friends and awakens the other Apocalypse Maidens while the attacks from eldritch entities become more frequent and dangerous. To her dismay, Dexter, a teenage boy from her gaming group, attends the same high school. They become friends, she learns Dex has a magical secret identity of his own, and they start to fall in love. Because the Apocalypse Maidens and their allies and adversaries are shaped by the cultural memes applicable to their situation, the novel is full of Magical Girl tropes. The Maidens have an animal-shaped wizardly mentor, cute costumes, iconic weapons, and a catch-phrase (“This Apocalypse Maiden says you are going down!”). As the cosmic threat builds to the climactic battle, Holly and her teammates become more and more reluctant to accept the loss of their friendship and memories after the hoped-for victory. This prospect lends the story a bittersweet tone. PRINCESS HOLY AURA is emotionally engaging as well as fun.
*****
Excerpt from “Stalking Wild Magic”:
Running down the forest trail dodging arrows was not Coleni’s idea of her mission in life. She was supposed to be protected from such hazards by a platoon of guardsmen, who unfortunately lay scattered on the trail behind, having done what they were meant to do. When the guard lieutenant screamed for her squad to run before turning to face the Delmathian onslaught, Coleni had not spared a moment’s thought to question why a common soldier was giving a sorcerer officer orders.
Her quick reaction had given her the advantage of being ahead of the pack of her fleeing, robe-encumbered compatriots. They had delayed their flight from the hill they had been standing on to watch the slaughter of the troops falling under the barrage of arrows. She had lengthened her lead a little when she jerked her novice uniform robe off over her head and freed her legs from the flapping inconvenience. A glance over her shoulder revealed several other novices on the ground, having tripped and trying to fend off swords with their bare hands.
She concentrated on the trail ahead and saw it widening out, rising to join the road that crossed its path. That would make it easier to run but gave a clearer shot to the pursuing soldiers. The road led to the safety of their base camp, but she questioned whether she could reach it. The undergrowth along the trail was thinning, and she could see that the trees around her grew far enough apart for her to dodge between them. Leaping into the bushes slowed her as the branches tore at her undershift and scraped the skin of her arms and legs. Hoping to slow the armored men even more, she dashed around a wide tree in front of her, putting it between her and the crashing sound closing in on her.
When the ground fell away from a stream crossing her flight, she leaped as far as she could into the gap. The water was knee deep, and her momentum pitched her face forward. She managed to straighten her arms and push off the stream’s pebbly bottom. Staggering upright, she clambered up the slope in front of her and through the weeds along the top. The sounds behind her grew faint as the majority of the Delmathians ran down the remaining members of her squad, but she wasn’t sure how many had chased her into the wood. The babble of the swiftly running water was all she heard close to her position. She dared not move and listened for a while, wondering how long someone nearby would wait for her to make a noise. She was good at slowing her breathing, concentrating her body to stillness, focusing her mind – that was what she was trained for.
Commander Telori is really gonna be ticked off! Coleni thought, when she had her body and mind under control. This was supposed to be a simple harassment-interdiction mission easily handled by a squad of novice illusionists led by one of their own. Get in, lay a false bridge over the gully, and get out before the Delmathian patrol they were sent to ambush got there. Nothing to it, she told herself.
A bird took off from the tree above Coleni. The flutter of wings sent a nervous shock through her system. Trying to remain motionless, she reminded herself that it was a good sign that wildlife was starting to stir around her. Maybe it’s time for you to leave as well, she thought, slowly moving her head to scan the area in front of her. The chittering of a squirrel off to her left, up in a tree, drew her attention, and she saw it glancing in her direction. Somebody knows you are here.
Coleni closed her eyes and began to imagine herself as a raccoon crouched beside a stream, intent on watching the water below for her favorite prey of crayfish. Seeing none, she slowly rose to her paws and turned away from the stream. The spell Coleni released closed around hers, and the squirrel watched the brown-coated predator move off into the trees. The soft padding of its departure barely rustled the thick leaves covering the forest floor.
Coleni held the illusion for a half hour, long enough for her to clear the area. Crawling through the increasingly dense undergrowth was killing her elbows and knees, but she couldn’t risk breaking profile to stand. Once she put more trees between her and any pursuit, she’d break the spell. Then she would stop to think.
-end of excerpt-
*****
My Publishers:
Writers Exchange E-Publishing: Writers Exchange
Harlequin: Harlequin
Hard Shell Word Factory: Hard Shell
Whiskey Creek: Whiskey Creek
You can contact me at: MLCVamp@aol.com
“Beast” wishes until next time—
Margaret L. Carter
Welcome to the March 2018 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):
This is my Facebook author page. Please visit!
Facebook
Here’s my page in Barnes and Noble’s Nook store. These items include some of the short stories that used to be on Fictionwise:
Barnes and Noble
Go here and scroll down to “Available Short Fiction” for a list of those stories with their Amazon links:
Kindle Works
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
This is issue number 150 of the newsletter! Hard to believe I’ve been doing it for so long. Thanks for sticking around! In celebration, I’ll give a free PDF of my story collection DAME ONYX TREASURES to anyone who requests it between now and March 10. I’d gratefully appreciate some Amazon reviews if you have time. E-mail me at: MLCVamp@aol.com.
I’ve compiled a collection of fantasy tales by my husband, Leslie Roy Carter, and me, most of which were published in the webzine SORCEROUS SIGNALS (now closed). A few are spin-offs from our “Wild Sorceress” series but can be read completely on their own. You can check it out here:
I’m happy to report that FROM THE DARK PLACES, my urban fantasy / horror novel with Lovecraftian elements and a romantic subplot, has just been re-released:
It’s been lightly re-edited, mainly to change the setting from explicitly the late 1970s to the indefinite past. When Dr. Ray Benson and Father Michael Emeric warn young widow Kate Jacobs that she and her four-year-old daughter have become targets of dark forces from beyond our space-time continuum, Kate at first thinks they’re deranged fanatics. Then a sinister attack on her little girl changes Kate’s mind. An excerpt from that incident appears below.
This month I’m interviewing fantasy author C. J. Bahr.
*****
Interview with C. J. Bahr:
What inspired you to begin writing?
My love of reading. I grew up in a household where my parents and older sisters always had a book in hand, which set a great example for me. As I grew older, sometimes I didn’t find the stories I wanted to read, so I started to write my own. I think it was around junior high and have been writing ever since. It wasn’t until my late twenties I decided to try and get my work published. I managed to sell a short story to a Marion Zimmer Bradley anthology. I thought I was a one hit wonder until almost twenty years later I sold my first novel.
What genres do you work in?
I write mostly fantasy, in the sub-genres of contemporary and paranormal romance.
Do you outline, “wing it,” or something in between?
I’m mostly a “seat-of-the-pants” writer. I really wish I could outline, I think it would make me a faster writer, but no matter how I try, I just can’t make myself accomplish it. I always know how my story starts and the ending, but getting from the beginning to the conclusion is always an adventure.
What have been the major influences on your writing?
First, my fellow author and friend, Marla. She’s so inspiring and such a cheerleader, she kept me going through the drought of not being published. Second, the authors I avidly read, who I’d love to be when I grow up, so to speak. In fantasy, it would be Raymond E. Feist, Mercedes Lackey, Barbara Hambly and Kevin Hearne. In paranormal, such authors as Jeaniene Frost, Ilona Andrews, Jim Butcher, Nalini Singh and Karen Marie Moning.
Your bio mentions that you’ve done music editing for television. What does that entail, and has it affected your writing career?
Music editing is part of post production just like film and sound editing; however, instead of pictures or effects, I work with music. I help build the soundtracks you hear in television and films. I work directly with a composer and collaborate with the show’s creditor to build and supervise the music that goes into shows. It’s super fun and uses both right and left-brain skills because there is a creative side of making music but also a technical side of the computer software I use to build the soundtracks.
My day career hasn’t really affected my writing except for making time to write, which can be difficult at times. Another way my job influences, I tend to “score” my writing, lol. I always write with music playing in the background. It has to be instrumental because vocals distract me. If I’m writing an action scene, I’ll cue up some fun battle music from various movies to help get me in the groove, or something dark for my villain scenes or bouncy music for my bantering dialogue. It’s like creating my own personal soundtrack for my book.
Please tell us about your experience with having Walking Through Fire released as an audiobook.
My publisher, The Wild Rose Press, gets the ball rolling by posting it to the group of narrators they use. When a narrator picks it up, they give a short sample and I get a say if I like them or not. Once the narrator is chosen, the chapters come in for approval and corrections, which I do on my own. I developed quite the relationship with my narrator, Ben Eastman, because he actually got seriously ill during the recording; it was scary there for a bit. He’s all better now and the audiobook was released on February 15th. Currently Ben and I are collaborating on book 2 of the Fire Chronicles, and we’re having fun figuring out all the different characters’ voices.
What is your latest or next-forthcoming book (or both)?
“Forged In Fire”, book 2 in the Fire Chronicles series released this past November. It’s a time travel romance set in 1795 in Yorkshire, England. I finally got to write a handsome, roguish highwayman story!
Here’s the blurb:
Beth Leighton moved to Scotland to marry the love of her life. But then he betrays her and she is fatally shot. However the Archangel Remiel interferes, and she awakes to find herself in 18th century England. Alive but confused and lost, she wants to go home. Despite a roguish and handsome highwayman.
Christopher “Kit” Locke is haunted by his past mistakes and lives on danger’s edge, not caring if he lives or dies. He will leave that choice to Fate. Intrigued by the spirited Beth, he is drawn from his spiraling descent and is enlisted to help steal an evil artifact, the Viper’s Eye, a demonic soul-stealing jewel.
While the Archangel and the Duke of Hell battle it out, both Beth and Kit must also fight evil. When the stone seeks Kit’s soul, can Beth’s love keep him from falling victim to the Viper’s Eye or will she lose Kit to Hell’s fire?
I’m also taking the plunge into self-publishing and hope to have my first contemporary fantasy, “Valley Fever”, released in a few months. It’s set in Southern California and it’s super fast paced and taking place across seven days. It has monsters, elves and an earthquake.
What are you working on now?
Currently I’m working on book 3 of my Fire Chronicles series, which has the potential of seven books, all meant to be stand alones (though book 2 has a bit of a cross over…). It is tentatively called “Playing With Fire.” This time, it is set in present day New Orleans and hopefully I’ll write this one faster! When I get stuck, I jump over to an urban fantasy I’ve been playing around with starring a kick-ass time cop.
What advice would you give to aspiring writers?
Two things… First, find a fellow writer friend. It has helped me so much to have a trusted and talented friend to bounce ideas off of and someone who will give me her honest opinion and critiques. My writing improves dramatically being able have her insight. Second, never give up! I was first published in 1994 with a short story, and I didn’t strike again until 2014. It would have been so easy to throw in the towel, but I believed in myself and hung in there. It helps that I love to write, so I was going to continue whether I published again or not. Dreams can come true, you have to be persistent and keep growing and improving. It will happen.
Website:
C. J. Bahr
Blog:
Blog
Twitter:
@cjbahr (https://twitter.com/cjbahr)
Facebook:
Facebook
Goodreads:
Goodreads
Bookbub:
Bookbub
*****
Some Books I’ve Read Lately:
BECOMING MADELEINE, by Charlotte Jones Voiklis and Lena Roy. A life of Madeleine L’Engle by her granddaughters, aimed at teen readers. It isn’t a comprehensive biography; the main body of the work ends with the publication of A WRINKLE IN TIME, because the authors felt (as explained in the afterword) that young readers would find L’Engle’s early years most interesting and because WRINKLE marks a major turning point in her career. The rest of her life is summarized in the epilogue. BECOMING MADELEINE is a quick read and very engaging, illustrated by numerous photos of L’Engle and her family as well as excerpts from her letters and journals with photocopied samples of those and other relevant documents, even school report cards. While the authors don’t gloss over her flaws, mistakes, and periods of discouragement and depression, on the whole they offer a highly positive and deeply loving portrait of their grandmother. This is a short book, though, omitting many of the details that can be found in L’Engle’s own autobiographical memoirs such as TWO-PART INVENTION and SUMMER OF THE GREAT-GRANDMOTHER. My own most significant disappointment is that, as a biography for teens, it doesn’t delve into contentious matters such as the extent to which L’Engle re-shaped her life in retelling it. (Was her father actually gassed in World War I? According to other sources I’ve come upon, there is some doubt.) There’s no mention, understandably, of her husband’s rumored drinking problem and infidelity or the fact that their son’s early death resulted from alcohol abuse. When an author incorporates so much of her own life into her works, I think it’s reasonable to want to know how closely the writings correspond to the events they’re inspired by. I had especially hoped for a discussion of her children’s negative reaction to some of her novels, such as MEET THE AUSTINS; the fact that they felt hurt by her fiction and she never fully understood why is briefly alluded to but not explored. Still, until an in-depth biography for adults comes along, this is a delightful and insightful book any fan of L’Engle’s work will enjoy reading.
THE CACKLE OF CTHULHU, edited by Alex Shvarstman. The title of this mostly-reprint anthology is self-explanatory: It contains 22 humorous tales based on Lovecraft’s mythos. Contributions come from such distinguished writers as Neil Gaiman, Esther Friesner, Jody Lynn Nye, Mike Resnick, and Yvonne Navarro, among others. Friesner’s “The Shunned Trailer” is as funny as one would expect from her. Other standouts, in my opinion, include Nye’s “My Little Old One,” Kevin Wetmore’s “Tales of a Fourth-Grade Shoggoth,” Shaenon K. Garrity’s “To Whatever” (notes to “the thing that lives in the walls”), “The Innsmouth of the South,” by Rachael K. Jones, and “In the Employee Manual of Madness,” by G. Scott Huggins. A few, such as “But Someone’s Got to Do It,” by Konstantine Paradias, and “A Stiff Bargain,” by Matt Mikalatos, impress me as more disturbing than funny. My favorite is Gaiman’s “Shoggoth’s Old Peculiar,” featuring a clueless American tourist who, while hiking across the English countryside, stumbles upon an isolated village with a pub frequented by decidedly odd customers. The dialogue sparkles with dry, British-style humor. (Glossing the iconic phrase “Strange Aeons,” one of the batrachian locals explains, “We are not talking your normal Aeons here at all.”) A must-read tome for dedicated fans of the Cthulhu Mythos.
DARK IN DEATH, by J. D. Robb. I especially liked this latest Eve Dallas mystery because of the subject matter. Two seemingly unrelated murders turn out to have nothing to do with the victims personally at all. The murderer is reenacting crimes from the works of a bestselling mystery author in order to “rewrite” them to make the villains win. She (we learn the antagonist’s motive and probable gender early in the story) chooses the victims solely on the basis of how well they match characters from the published novels. So her ultimate target is the author, not the individual victims. Eve and her team unearth letters and e-mails that chart the killer’s progress from devoted fan and aspiring writer to a bitter enemy who feels betrayed by the author she’d deluded herself into considering a friend and mentor. The motive comes across as all too believable. I enjoyed the inside glimpses of the publishing business and the writing life. Especially pointed is the absurdity of the criminal’s notion that the author’s latest novel was plagiarized from an unpublished manuscript the author sent back unopened and unread—only four months before the publication of the novel. All the favorite secondary characters make appearances except Summerset, who’s on vacation. The anticipated scenes play out as usual—banter between Eve and her partner; interviews with her reporter friend and the department’s psychological profiler; sex with her multi-billionaire husband, Roarke; suspenseful, narrowly missed opportunities to nab the culprit; and finally Eve’s interrogation of the captured murderer. As always, Eve’s New York feels to me like a thoroughly believable picture of the 2060s, just futuristic enough.
THE WILD GIRL, by Kate Forsyth. The author of “Rapunzel” novel BITTER GREENS offers a fictional exploration of the early life of Dortchen Wild, wife of Wilhelm Grimm, from her initial crush on him at age twelve up to their marriage in their thirties. Their families were close neighbors. Their relationship, as told by Forsyth, suffered many bumps in the road until they acknowledged their mutual love, and even then many years passed before they married. Through Dortchen’s viewpoint, we witness the Grimms’ financial struggles, her difficult family life with an always stern and authoritarian father who became outright abusive after his wife’s death, and the cultural and political atmosphere of the German states in the early nineteenth century. Jakob and Wilhelm Grimm often found themselves in political hot water while trying to find jobs that would enable them to support their siblings. Their trailblazing collection of tales took a long time to find a publisher and still longer to win the acclaim it deserved. Dortchen’s father opposed her relationship with Wilhelm, but even after her father’s death, the couple waited ten years to marry. Forsyth theorizes, on the basis of changes from original to published versions of certain tales, that Dortchen may have been molested by her father. Contrary to popular belief, the Grimms did not travel around the countryside collecting fairy tales from old peasants. Many if not most of their stories were told to them by informants, mainly women, of their own class and social circle. Dortchen contributed at least a quarter of the total. Her family’s long-time servant “Old Marie” serves as an example of a bridge between the middle-class informants and the original folklore sources. The novel includes the texts of many tales, with the geographical source, who supplied them to the Grimms, and the date they were recorded. Although this book, unlike BITTER GREENS, doesn’t contain any fantastic elements outside the fairy tales themselves, it makes a fascinating read. One can’t help yearning for the Grimms’ success and Dortchen’s happiness.
*****
Excerpt from FROM THE DARK PLACES:
Kate dashed to the telephone in the kitchen. Just as she reached it, the doorbell buzzed. She scurried to the front door. “Who’s there?” Her voice sounded shrill, like a stranger’s.
“Ray Benson.”
Momentarily forgetting his betrayal, she scrambled to unfasten the locks. When he stepped inside, she remembered her fury at his breach of trust. “What are you doing here? I told you–”
“I had to come.” He clutched her arm. “What’s happened? Something is terribly wrong, isn’t it?”
“Oh, God, yes! It’s Sara!” Together they hurried to the back bedroom. “How did you know?”
“A few minutes ago I woke up out of a dead sleep and knew you needed me. I had a feeling of urgency. What’s wrong with Sara?”
She pulled him into the room and flicked the light switch. “Look at her!”
Ray bent over the bed, flexing Sara’s limbs, checking her pulse.
“She woke me up, screaming,” said Kate, “and when I got here, she was like this.” Her voice shook, along with her hands. She intertwined her fingers, struggling for control. “Shouldn’t I call an ambulance?”
“No.”
“No! Have you lost your mind?” The cry tore from her throat.
Without answering, Ray stood up, glanced at the window–open, Kate suddenly realized, though she had locked it. He gazed bleakly at her. “Kate, you must gather all your courage and try to believe me. This is not Sara.”
Paralyzed by the incomprehensible words, she simply stared at him. In a harsh whisper she said, “What are you talking about?”
“I’m sorry to have to do this, but I can’t explain. Just watch.” He placed his left hand on the little girl’s forehead.
Kate grabbed his right arm and cried, “Don’t touch her, you maniac!”
“Please, Kate.” His eyes held such anguished appeal that she no longer doubted his sincerity. While he might still be insane, he meant her no harm. He cared about her and Sara.
When Kate released his right arm, he raised it as if taking oath in court. He muttered a phrase in a language she didn’t recognize. At the same time, he traced a cross on the child’s brow.
Sara’s shape collapsed like a deflated balloon. Her features withered. A stick figure with hair and clothing like dry leaves lay on the bed. Within seconds, it crumbled into a scattering of gray dust.
Kate screamed. She continued screaming as Ray half-carried her from the bedroom. Blackness swirled before her eyes. She felt hands shaking her. When she opened her eyes, she was sitting at the kitchen table. Ray pressed a glass into her fingers. She drank. Sherry.
He clasped her head between his hands and made her gaze into his eyes. “Listen to me. That was not Sara. Sara is alive.”
She had to take a longer swallow before she could process that remark well enough to respond. “What makes you think so?” The room lurched around her. Was he lying? How she yearned to believe him!
“Because if they only wanted her dead, they wouldn’t have gone to all that trouble to take her. They’d have killed her on the spot.”
“They?” Conspiracy again. God, could it all be true?
“Wait here.” He patted her shoulder, then left the room. She closed her eyes, trying to blank out what she’d seen. Shortly Ray reappeared. He pulled her to her feet. “Come with me.”
She guessed where he wanted to lead her. “No! I can’t go in there!”
“It’s all right. There’s nothing terrible to see.” He put his arm around her shoulders.
Letting him guide her, she forced herself to look at Sara’s bed. To her relief, Ray had stripped it. “I want to show you the window,” he said. When he pushed the window down to give her a view of the four panes of glass, she saw that the top right had a circular hole in it. “Glass cutter and suction cup,” said Ray. “Standard burglary skills. Someone broke in this way, took Sara–probably after giving her some kind of sedative by injection –and left a golem.” Until that moment, she’d still half feared that the thing on the bed was her daughter. The marks of a break-in supported Ray’s theory.
“How?” Shuddering, Kate hid her face on Ray’s shoulder and burst into tears.
He held her for a long time. When her mind cleared again, they were sitting together on the living room couch. “What was that thing?” she whispered.
“A decoy to give them a head start on us. If you’d depended on ordinary medical knowledge, you might not have realized Sara was gone for days, until the thing disintegrated on its own.” He clasped her hand with a gentleness in marked contrast to the grim expression on his face. “A very old trick. The late medieval inquisitors claimed a witch on her way to the Sabbat could deceive her family by leaving a poppet, a lifelike image of herself, in bed in her place. Looks like the legends have a bit of truth in them.”
“You’re talking about magic.” She pressed her knuckles to her mouth to keep from screaming again. After a few deep breaths, she could speak coherently. “Literal black magic, right here in modern San Francisco.”
“I’m not surprised you didn’t believe it when we tried to explain this afternoon.”
For a fleeting instant, she wondered whether Ray and Father Emeric had set up this bizarre disappearance to convert her to their views. But she immediately dismissed the idea. If Ray’s concern wasn’t genuine, she couldn’t trust any of her perceptions about anything. Then that means I have real enemies–supernatural enemies. “I’m sorry I accused you of such terrible things.”
-end of excerpt-
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“Beast” wishes until next time—
Margaret L. Carter