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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:

Vampire’s Crypt

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):

Complete Works

For anyone who would like to read previous issues of this newsletter, they’re posted on my website here (starting from January 2018):

Newsletters

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:

Newsletters

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:

Dame Onyx Treasures

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:

Vampire Dreams

*****

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

Welcome to the November 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:

Vampire’s Crypt

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):

Complete Works

For anyone who would like to read previous issues of this newsletter, they’re posted on my website here (starting from January 2018):

Newsletters

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

Happy Thanksgiving to my American readers! May we all find something to celebrate even in these strange times.

As you may know, Yahoo Groups will close permanently on December 15. This newsletter will continue to be uploaded here:

Newsletters

Please bookmark the page and check for new issues at the beginning of each month. Thanks! I will post a notice on my Facebook author site—address noted above—when each newsletter is uploaded. By following that page (if you don’t already), you can be sure not to miss an issue.

Below is another snippet from my werewolf novel, SHADOW OF THE BEAST, recently republished by Writers Exchange. At this point in the story, heroine Jenny doesn’t yet realize she’s actually a werewolf. She thinks her memories of transformation were nightmares. The book’s page:

http://www.writers-exchange.com/Shadow-of-the-Beast/

Here’s an interview with Sydney Winward, author of vampire romances and other romance subgenres.

*****

Interview with Sydney Winward:

What inspired you to begin writing?

I first found my love of writing after I wrote down an awesome dream I had. I expanded on the details, and eventually, the story became a book. The book was awful! I was only twelve years old at the time. But I remember the pride of the accomplishment from writing a book, and it inspired me to keep writing.

What genres do you work in?

I mainly write fantasy and paranormal. Always romance. But recently, I’ve been veering toward historical. I just finished writing a historical fantasy trilogy, and now I’m working on a western historical for The Wild Rose Press Wylder West Series.

Do you outline, “wing it,” or something in between?

Something in between. I’ll have a vague idea of the direction of the book and what scenes I want to include in the story, and from there, I’ll wing everything in between. If I outline too much, I find I lose interest in the story. I prefer to be just as surprised and excited by what happens next as my readers.

What have been the major influences on your writing (favorite authors, life experiences, or whatever)?

During my teenage years, Christopher Paolini played a big part in my love of writing. I loved the world he created in the Inheritance Cycle and the depth of his characters. I was such a geek that when I went to an event to listen to him speak many years ago, I didn’t want to wash my hand when he shook it after haha!

I also fell in love with reading, which also played a huge part in me wanting to write my own books. Brandon Sanderson taught me there is no limit to the worlds you can create. Sarah J. Maas taught me great characters contribute to a great storyline.

Please tell us about your vampire series. How do your vampires differ from the traditional type (if they do)?

The vampires in The Bloodborn Series are closely related to traditional vampires in the sense that they don’t have a reflection, sunlight burns them, and they can’t enter a room or building without permission. I sprinkled in a bit of my own magic and lore into the world I created. Although my vampires do drink human blood, they also have their own set of morals and standards they adhere to.

How did you research witchcraft for ROOT BREW FLOAT?

Growing up, I was a HUGE fan of Charmed, the tv show. Some of my ideas came from what I learned from the witches. Other ideas stemmed from my own imagination. One thing I love about writing fantasy is being able to create my own rules in my own world.

Do you have any advice for authors wanting to start a newsletter?

I highly recommend opting into a newsletter builder promotion with Booksweeps. I got over 900 new subscribers, plenty of which interact with me and follow the progress of my books. I’ve heard of other authors who have had success with Authors XP promotions and Story Origin. You have to make sure you have good content in your newsletter that will entice readers to open the email and read what you have to say. It also doesn’t hurt to offer incentives/freebies/giveaways!

What is your latest-released or soon-forthcoming work?

My third book in The Bloodborn Series, Bloodscourge, is currently undergoing edits with my editor. It’s my favorite book I’ve written in the series, a story about Dracula when he meets Elisabeta during a dangerous time in Ichor Knell, the vampire city.

What are you working on now?

I’m currently working on a western historical romance set in 1879, a part of the Wylder West Series with The Wild Rose Press. Here’s a rough blurb for the book:
When Sophia Meadows’ closest friend dies (the man she has secretly loved for years), a piece of her soul, and her music, dies with him. Two years later, her father arranges a marriage to a wealthy businessman across the country. Along the journey to meet her fiancé, the train gets derailed and robbed by bandits.
She seeks help at the nearest town, and upon arriving, she runs into the man who ripped her heart out with his death two years earlier. Alive and healthy.
Samuel Woods is a bounty hunter, and when one of his jobs goes south, he is forced to fake his death to protect those he loves. When he runs into Sophia during a job in the middle of nowhere, he’s floored. He has to win back her trust, and her heart, before she shuts away from him completely, and before she chooses to return to the man she’s been promised to.
As their relationship gets rekindled into something far more than friendship, Sophia finds her music again. However, the danger Samuel has feared for so long returns when the bandits kidnap her to get to him. He must stop them and finish his job, otherwise he’ll lose the woman he loves for a second time.

What advice would you give to aspiring writers?

Just keep writing. I wrote maybe something close to two million words in stories and books just for fun before I got Bloodborn published, my debut novel. I’m excited that Bloodborn is a finalist in the New Jersey Romance Writers Golden Leaf contest! Perseverance and dedication helped me get here. Each project you finish, you become a better writer by the time you start your next project. Getting published takes a lot of time and practice!

What’s the URL of your website? Your blog? Where else can we find you on the web?

Website: Sydney Winward
Twitter: Twitter
Facebook: Facebook
Instagram: Instagram
BookBub: BookBub
Amazon Author Profile: Amazon

*****

Some Books I’ve Read Lately:

A DEADLY EDUCATION, by Naomi Novik. The subtitle “Lesson One of the Scholomance” foreshadows more to follow. In fact, although the plot of this book reaches a satisfying resolution, the final lines set up an irresistible hook for the next volume. So be warned. Novik’s Scholomance isn’t the Devil’s academy mentioned in DRACULA, probably just named after it. It’s not clear where this Scholomance is located, or, at least, where its entry gate is anchored, since its interior space exists on a plane separate from the mundane realm. Wizards at this academy get a much harsher education than those at Hogwarts. Novik’s school was constructed in the late 1800s mainly for teens from enclaves, the elite clans of the magical community. Lower-status students are admitted principally to serve as cannon fodder for the protection of the elites. The mana—magical energy—of young wizards attracts hordes of ravenous monsters of various types and power levels, collectively called maleficaria, “mals” for short. Layers of magical wards protect the students, but not very effectively, judging from the frequent attacks they have to fend off. There are no teachers; scholars are self-taught, highly motivated by the goal of living to graduate. Freshmen can bring in only items they can carry under a limited weight allowance. They’re trapped inside until graduation, receiving no contact from the outside world unless a new student agrees to deliver a message. The school itself appears quasi-sentient, supplying books, food, and other necessities, but in a capricious manner. If you put something down without securing it, the object may not be there next time you look for it. Each single-occupant dorm room has a window opening onto the void, from which the resident may request items from the school and sometimes actually get what he or she needs. At the end of four years, surviving students enter the graduation hall and fight their way to the exit. The first-person narrator, Galadriel (called El), in her third year, has no friends. Although her commune-dwelling mother is a gentle, New Age witch, compassionate toward all living things, El herself has vast destructive potential but less aptitude for modest, more useful spells. Her classmates fear she is or will become a maleficar, this world’s equivalent of an evil sorcerer, although even the nicest of the students falls short of altruism. Orion Lake appears to be an exception. He infuriates El with his habit of protecting other students, even rescuing El from monsters more than once. In the opening scene, she seriously considers killing him to stop him from saving her life. (There’s no penalty for attacking classmates aside from informal ones students themselves may impose.) She wants a chance to destroy a mal herself in a flamboyant way, demonstrating her power and usefulness. Thus she hopes to win allies and get invited to join an enclave after graduation. Over the course of the story, she manages to form an alliance by other means and, though at first reluctantly, make a few friends. With Orion, she develops a fraught frenemy relationship, peppered with snarky insults, that may develop into something deeper. At the climax, the two of them join forces with other students in a grand project to change the terms of graduation. This book differs markedly from both the Temeraire “Napoleonic War with dragons” series and Novik’s two high fantasy novels. I found A DEADLY EDUCATION enthralling and can hardly wait for the next installment.

ELSEWHERE, by Dean Koontz. I like this latest novel best of Koontz’s recent thrillers that I’ve read, primarily because it’s a portal fantasy. Technically, though, it’s science fiction, since the characters travel the multiverse by means of an electronic gadget the size and shape of a cell phone, but without buttons. Single father Jeffrey Coltrane, whose wife left him and vanished seven years earlier, lives with his eleven-year-old daughter, Amity, and her pet mouse (adopted as practice for a puppy). Jeffrey supports them by restoring and selling vintage radios. Ed, a friendly but apparently deranged homeless man who turns out to be a brilliant quantum physicist in hiding from the government, gives Jeffrey a box containing the “key to everything,” warning him not to open it. Of course Jeffrey opens the box, and of course the device accidentally gets activated, sending him, Amity, and the mouse to an alternate America. It’s a dreary place under a totalitarian regime, complete with an organization analogous to the Hitler Youth. The Coltranes manage to escape back to their Earth, but their troubles have only begun. Despite Amity’s pleading to use the key to find a universe where an alternate version of her mother might enable their family to reunite, Jeffrey decrees that random jumping among universes is too dangerous to undertake for such a tenuous possibility. Nevertheless, as we’d expect, they’re forced to use the key to escape when agents of a covert government organization scour the neighborhood in search of Ed (who has disappeared) and the key. They zero in on the Coltranes, leading to suspenseful flights between our universe and another, much worse than the totalitarian America. Jeffrey and Amity find an unexpected ally and narrowly avoid capture or death several times. An alternate-universe Ed, still eccentric but mentally sounder than the one Jeffrey knew, enters their lives as a sort of science-fictional fairy godfather. Jeffrey and especially Amity are endearing characters, and their well-deserved denouement feels right, even if a little rushed. The one thing I don’t like about this novel is the antagonist. The head of the team in pursuit of the key, he’s yet another iteration of the same unbelievable villains Koontz has been creating for the past few decades. Like all the rest of them, he’s an arrogant sociopath with delusions of restructuring society to eliminate or subjugate the unfit—practically everybody—after accumulating enough wealth and power to impose his will without restraint. With boundless contempt for most of the human species, he has no characteristics outside this template unless we count the attempt to give him some motivation through the backstory of an evil stepmother (from his viewpoint, at least). He’s a caricature of a melodramatic supervillain but without superpowers. Couldn’t he be a credible, normally human bad guy working for the dark side? Wouldn’t the urgency of retrieving the key give him enough motivation without making him pure evil incarnate?

THE HOLLOW PLACES, by T. Kingfisher. Although I didn’t find this novel as mind-blowing as Kingfisher’s superb THE TWISTED ONES, it’s an excellent story that I’ll reread more than once. It combines a peculiar house with one of my favorite motifs, portal fantasy. Like the earlier novel, THE HOLLOW PLACES features a female first-person narrator with an irresistibly witty voice. However, unlike the heroine of THE TWISTED ONES, who reluctantly returns to her late grandmother’s grim house to clear out mounds of hoarded junk, newly divorced Kara finds a welcome refuge in her eccentric uncle’s Glory to God Museum of Natural Wonders, Curiosities, and Taxidermy, where she often hung out while growing up. While other people, including her ex-husband, might consider the bizarre collection creepy, she thinks of the displays, artifacts, and stuffed animals as old friends. She gladly accepts an invitation to live at the museum, in a back bedroom adorned by her favorite taxidermy piece, an elk’s head she named “Prince” in childhood. In return, she waits on tourists and begins the monumental project of creating a digital catalog of the collection. Soon after a box of miscellany including a “corpse-otter” carving from the Danube arrives, her uncle has to go into the hospital, leaving Kara in charge on her own. Almost immediately, she discovers a hole in the wall that turns out to be much more than it initially appears. At first assuming a visitor did the damage and left without mentioning it, Kara enlists Simon, who works at the coffee shop next door, to help with the repair. Simon is a quirky character, a middle-aged, gay man who proves to be a brave and loyal friend, sticking to Kara throughout the harrowing adventure that follows. Probing behind the wall, they find more space than the building could reasonably hold. They soon run out of plausible explanations for the anomaly and come upon a mysterious door. It leads to a realm of water and fog, dotted with small islands overgrown by willow trees. Each one, it turns out, probably harbors a portal to a different realm, like the Wood Between the Worlds in C. S. Lewis’s THE MAGICIAN’S NEPHEW. The comparison doesn’t escape Kara, who eventually begins to think of the place as an anti-Narnia. Though eerie and desolate, the landscape doesn’t seem outright scary at first. Exploring it, though, Kara and Simon stumble upon horrors both human and inhuman. Graffiti that warn “They can hear you thinking” and “Pray They are hungry” are just the beginning. An encounter with a trapped explorer from another world is particularly gruesome. They manage to escape and get home, just barely, but Kara soon learns that walling up the hole doesn’t end the danger. The final revelation of what caused the crack between dimensions came as a surprise to me, poignant as well as terrifying. My first thought when Kara and Simon entered the fog-shrouded island landscape was of Algernon Blackwood’s “The Willows.” Sure enough, the concluding Author’s Note reveals that she was inspired by Blackwood’s classic story. This novel is another can’t-miss read for fans of numinous horror with a subtly Lovecraftian feel.

THE MERE WIFE, by Maria Dahvana Headley. When I learned this retelling of BEOWULF was set in contemporary suburbia, the premise didn’t appeal to me. Having read highly favorable reviews, though, I decided to give the book a chance. The characters and the author’s craft drew me in. Although you don’t need familiarity with the ancient epic to appreciate this story, awareness of the parallels adds richness and depth to a reading of the novel. It focuses on two mother-son pairs. Willa lives in a gated community named Herot Hall after the family of her domineering husband. Dana, a traumatized war veteran and former POW, grew up in the same area and came home after her release and confinement in a military hospital to find the upscale development in place of the landscape she remembers. She secretly moves into partly flooded caverns that include an abandoned train station, where she gives birth to her son, Gren. Because of her severe PTSD, she doesn’t remember how he was conceived. She brings him up in a survivalist lifestyle, totally isolated from the outside world. As a preadolescent boy, he tests his boundaries by sneaking around to investigate Herot Hall. There he meets Dylan, Willa’s son, and they become friends. Unaware of this influence on Dylan, his parents fear he’s becoming mentally ill. Unlike the slaughtered warriors in BEOWULF, Dylan doesn’t get killed by Gren but voluntarily runs away to join him in the caverns. The narrative explores the characters of both Dana and Willa in depth, revealing that Willa is almost as troubled in her quieter way. Other viewpoint characters occupy less onstage time, notably the police officer (Beowulf’s modern counterpart) with whom Willa eventually becomes involved. There are also first-person plural interludes that function in a Greek chorus mode, such as overviews by the ladies of the community and monologues by a collective voice that seems to represent the landscape itself. While I didn’t much like the present-tense narration (as usual), it does enhance the surreal quality of the novel. I was slightly disappointed by the absence of fantasy content, except perhaps the voice of the mountains (if taken literally) and the hints about Gren’s appearance (he’s never explicitly described in detail). Like the original epic, MERE WIFE is essentially a tragedy, so prepare for much sadness. Nevertheless, it’s highly effective and worth reading for its own sake as well as its transmutation of BEOWULF into modern terms.

*****

Excerpt from SHADOW OF THE BEAST:

In the bedroom Jenny fumbled the covers down and collapsed onto the sheets without undressing. The bed rocked like a sailboat in the wake of a motor yacht. She swallowed the nausea and let her eyes droop shut.

The next thing she knew, she was sitting on a wooden footbridge gazing at the moon’s reflection in a pond. A cool breeze wafted the scent of pine from nearby trees. On the bank a few yards away, reeds rustled with the movement of a drowsy bird. She panted; she must have been running a moment ago.

She trotted across the bridge, her nails clicking on the boards. A sundial sat in the middle of an artificial layout of sand, gravel, and assorted grasses. Around her Jenny saw trees, shrubbery, and marsh weeds; in the middle distance loomed a dark building. Beyond the trees she heard the subdued roar of traffic.

Her mouth tasted dry and stale. Mincing through squishy grass to the edge of the pond, she bowed her head to lap the murky water. Her stomach was a little queasy, and her head felt clogged.

A few yards away, a mallard duck flapped its wings. When its smell penetrated her senses, she began to salivate, stood with her jaws agape and her tongue out.

Her hindquarters twitched. She clamped her jaws shut on the snarl that tried to rumble out of her chest. Another nervous flutter from the bird spurred her to action.

She sprang.

A leap into the air caught the duck as it tried to launch itself to safety. Her fangs slashed a wing. Shifting her jaws for a firmer grip, she gave the bird a vigorous shake. Her sharp ears heard the neck snap.

Hot blood gushed into her mouth.

When she was done, her belly filled with a warm heaviness, she stretched her forelegs, licked her muzzle, and emitted a luxurious yawn. Picking her way through the damp weeds away from the scraps of her kill, she found a sheltered nook under a stand of trees. She curled into a ball and fell asleep.

#
A hard lump poked her in the ribs. Her fingers brushed damp earth and pine needles. She opened her eyes. A full moon shone through swaying branches. She rolled onto her other side. The lump under her was a root.

Oh, God, I’m really out here!

She gathered her stiff, sore legs under her, clutching the tree trunk for support as she stood up. She skimmed her palm down the front of her body. Bare skin, crawling with the chill of the night breeze.

Looking up at the building that loomed over her, she realized where she was. She had sleepwalked all the way to the Tawes Garden, behind the District Court complex near the stadium.

Her plight could have been worse; she could have crossed a major highway. She tiptoed in the direction of the massive, gray stone court buildings. Her tender feet winced at the pebbles and twigs on the ground. Dizziness made her stop and grab hold of a limb or bush every few yards. Her mouth tasted rank, and the pulse throbbed in her temples.

Jenny slinked around the corner of the building and crouched in the shadow of a tree a few feet from the sidewalk. She stared across Taylor Avenue to the parking lot and the dark bulk of the stadium. Crossing Taylor and sneaking past the stadium to the residential neighborhood presented the main hazard. Jenny knelt under the tree, trying to make herself small as a car turned from Rowe Boulevard onto Taylor. The headlights just missed her.

Then she jumped up and dashed across the street. Not much of a dash, for her weary legs could manage little more than a shuffling trot. She reached the stadium lot and ducked under the chain next to the sidewalk just as a car rounded the curve on Taylor. Jenny dove full length onto the blacktop, scraping her palms and knees when she hit the ground.

She lay gasping until the noise of the car’s motor merged with the traffic on Rowe. After a couple of minutes she dredged up the energy to stand. She stumbled from one shadow to the next into the neat rows of houses, with a pause for breath at each stage. Finally she stopped to rest in a back yard shaded with a cluster of trees.

She sat in the dark under a weeping willow, hugging her bare legs. She felt tired enough to fall asleep on the spot, despite the damp and chill.

With a sigh she pulled herself to her feet again. Only a couple of blocks to home. When she crossed the yard, a dog started barking behind the chain link fence next door. Jenny knelt behind a holly bush. Shut up, dog! she silently begged. Next door the porch light flashed on. A heavy-set man in boxer shorts leaned out.

“Quiet, Tramp!” The dog charged the fence and kept barking. “What’s wrong with you? Somebody out there?” The man clicked on a flashlight and shined it around the yard.

I’m not here. Jenny held her breath. I’m invisible.

The beam missed her. After a moment the man yelled, “Damn dog, shut up!” and slammed the door.

Jenny lost no time in making a rush for the street. With no traffic in sight, she crossed in the center of the block, away from street lamps. Sticking to the deepest pools of darkness, she crept from one yard to the next.

-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 October 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:

Vampire’s Crypt

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):

Complete Works

For anyone who would like to read previous issues of this newsletter, now that the Yahoo group is useless for that purpose, they’re posted on my website here (starting from January 2018):

Newsletters

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

Happy Halloween!

If you’re a fan of C. S. Lewis’s THE SCREWTAPE LETTERS, you might enjoy my attempt at writing a Screwtape letter for these times. I hope I’ve achieved my goal of critiquing the current political climate in a nonpartisan way. It’s on my website here:

Screwtape in Election Year

My fox shapeshifter paranormal romance novella, KITSUNE ENCHANTMENT, has been released into the world! It’s technically a sequel to YOKAI MAGIC but can stand on its own. On the verge of losing her job, Shannon leaps at the chance to sell her graphic novel series to a major publisher. If only she could trust her reclusive artist partner, Ryo, to show up for editorial meetings at the science fiction convention they’re attending. She’d love to have a closer relationship with him, but how can she count on a man who keeps disappearing with the flimsiest of excuses? Ryo, who’s half kitsune, is prone to transforming into a fox at inopportune moments. Furthermore, a bungling amateur sorcerer is stalking him. Ryo returns Shannon’s feelings but fears she couldn’t accept the truth about him.

Kitsune Enchantment

There’s another brief excerpt below. In this scene, Ryo and Shannon are sharing dessert in his room at the convention hotel. Raptor and Vixen are their graphic-novel characters.

This month I’m interviewing vampire romance author R. E. Mullins.

*****

Interview with R. E. Mullins:

What inspired you to begin writing?

Divorce. That’s the honest, albeit unsavory, answer. My husband left for, uh, a younger pasture after twenty years of marriage. Long and short of it: After eighteen years as a homemaker, all previous skills were pretty rusty. I found a continuing education course catalog, and became a phlebotomist. I was lucky enough to work at a clinic that allowed me a flexible schedule. I was able to drop my youngest off at school before work and got off in time to pick him up. I worked weekends and holidays when his father had visitation. And, at night after my kids were in bed, I started to write.

Writing was something I’d fantasized about doing, but never seriously.

What genres do you work in?

Romance in the paranormal or fantasy genres. It seemed only natural that a phlebotomist would write about blood. Daily, while drawing my patients’ blood, I fantasized about a female phlebotomist. What would happen if a phlebotomist, working the nightshift, got bitten by a vampire? At night, I began putting those thoughts into a word file that kept getting bigger and bigger. Before I realized it I had a 96,000-word document that became: It’s A Wonderful Undead Life.

Do you outline, “wing it,” or something in between?

I don’t have a set pattern. With my first novel, It’s A Wonderful Undead Life, I ‘thought’ it out first. The Blautsaugers are (an old Bavarian word for Bloodsucker) an ancient family of vampires. When they find themselves the target of an evil plot, it’s up to the eldest brother, Gabe, to protect his family.

The second book, Vampire In The Scrying Glass, features the youngest brother of the Blautsauger family. I definitely winged that one. In fact, it seemed as if I had little to do but write down what the characters told me write. My third novel in the series, A Vampire To Be Reckoned With, my favorite, was fun to write as I loved researching the historical elements in the glimpses into Metta’s background. This led to a more organized style of writing. For better or worse, I reverted during the writing of the last book in the Blautsaugers of Amber Heights series. Cold Hearted Vampire was done completely by the seat of my pants.

What have been the major influences on your writing (favorite authors, life experiences, or whatever)?

As a child, I LOVED the Dark Shadows series on TV. I guess it gave me an early love for vampires. As for books, I tend to favor vampire books with some humor as in Nina Bangs and Lynsay Sands.

How do your vampires differ from the traditional type (if they do)?

As human ancestors learned to use fire and tools, so did vampires learn to cope with the world. Their need to go out in direct sunlight led them to invent both sunglasses and sunscreen. Still, they do prefer the nights. It must also be pointed out that, due to their long age span, they mature slowly. They don’t reach their majority until they pass the century mark, and it is celebrated in much the same way as a twenty-one-year-old human.

Please tell us about your Amber Heights setting and series. What other supernatural beings besides vampires does it include?

Amber Heights, Missouri is a fictional town but shares a lot of landmarks with the area I grew up in. Grand Falls, Shoal Creek, the Greenway Trail, and the low-water bridge are all part of my old stomping grounds.

Amber Heights isn’t just home to vampires, but a family of witches also reside there. Morgan Maguire’s story is found in Vampire in The Scrying Glass. After a spell goes horribly wrong, the young Morgan refuses her gifts. Now she must face her fears and learn to control her power in order to save Rafe Blautsauger.

What is your latest-released or soon-forthcoming work?

Diaper Duty Vampire is a novella that bridges the gap between
The Blautsaugers of Amber Heights Series and The Vampires of Amber Heights series. It tells the story of John Alden, Rafe Blautsauger’s Enforcement partner, and Joann Clarkson, Dr. Michaela Blautsauger’s laboratory assistant. Hilarity ensues as John unwillingly finds himself babysitting Joann’s toddler, Cody.

What are you working on now?

For over a year now, I’ve been working on the first complete novel in The Vampires of Amber Heights series. The working title varies between, Waking Up Dead and Waking Dead. Unfortunately, I’ve been battling some health issues that make it uncomfortable to type for any length of time. Some of the pain meds have also contributed to a major case of writer’s block. Yet, I keep plugging away. Hoping for inspiration to strike.

What advice would you give to aspiring writers?

Put your butt in the seat and keep trying. So many aspiring writers have asked me how I managed to write 4 novels and 2 novellas. Some have a plot in mind, some a character, but every one of them seems to suffer from the same problem. And, that is sticking to it. Words don’t magically appear on the page. You must write. Remember to frequently save your work. And when you’ve enough words you start to edit. Edit, Edit. And edit some more. All of this is before you even start to worry about professional editors or agents or publishers.

What’s the URL of your website? Your blog? Where else can we find you on the web?

R. E. Mullins

Facebook

BookBub

Goodreads

And my books can be purchased at
Amazon

Or any online book seller.

*****

Some Books I’ve Read Lately:

CINDERELLA IS DEAD, by Kalynn Bayron. Two centuries after Cinderella’s death, her fairy tale has become established as the compulsory pattern for every woman’s life. As soon as each girl in the kingdom reaches marriageable age, the law—imposed by the king descended from Cinderella and Prince Charming—dictates that she must attend a royal ball, where she may be chosen as a bride. Any female who offers herself at three balls and remains unchosen becomes a “forfeit.” Nobody knows the fate of the rejected girls. Bayron portrays an authoritarian, patriarchal society in which everyone lives in fear of the monarch and his cohorts. Even in fairly happy families, parents feel they have no choice but to steer their daughters toward the legally and socially required destiny. Girls eager to be chosen by their own equivalents of Prince Charming obsess over their costumes for the ball and dream of encountering a fairy godmother, which seldom or never happens. At sixteen, Sophia does not want to be chosen by any man. She’s in love with her best friend, Erin, who rejects the proposition of running away together. (Somewhat understandably—where would they go? And when they’d almost certainly get caught, they would face a dire fate.) Another close friend, Luke, prefers boys over girls. In their country, of course, same-sex romance is not only taboo but nearly unthinkable. On the night of the ball, their plan for Luke to choose Sophia catastrophically fails. She escapes to a series of adventures that upend her entire concept of how the world works. Discovering the long-lost tomb of Cinderella, she meets Constance, the only surviving descendant of one of Cinderella’s stepsisters. From Constance, with whom she quickly develops a strong mutual attraction, Sophia learns the true story of Cinderella, her “evil” stepmother and stepsisters, and the perfidy of the original Prince Charming. Together, the two young women discover the king’s dark secret, and they set out to overthrow him. While I love the premise of this novel, it has some plot weaknesses, in my opinion. Sophia wanders around aimlessly much of the time, blundering into important discoveries (such as Cinderella’s tomb) and finding useful things and people by sheer luck. She ignores good advice but, thanks to her protagonist plot armor, survives and succeeds anyway. Still, she struck me as a sympathetic character despite my urge to shake sense into her sometimes. On the plus side, the story doesn’t imply that disposing of the wicked king will automatically make life perfect for all women and girls under his reign. Most fans of revisionist fairy-tale retellings should find this novel fresh and thought-provoking.

JUST ELLA, by Margaret Peterson Haddix. Another re-imagining of Cinderella, this one published in 1999. I came across it among our thousands of books and didn’t remember reading it, although I must have when I bought it. It’s possibly unique in retelling the tale with no magic at all. Narrated in the first person, it begins with Ella, renamed Cynthiana Eleanora now that she’s betrothed to the Prince, waking in her cold castle bedroom. She’s afraid to re-start the dead fire because she’s been scolded for previously doing such an un-princess-like thing. She’s astonished when she learns of the rumors about her fairy godmother. In fact, Ella dressed herself and got to the ball on her own by cleverness and hard work. She hadn’t even thought of dancing with Prince Charming, much less becoming engaged to him. She hoped to make connections with wealthy people who might hire her as a tutor, allowing her to escape from her stepmother and the Step-Evils, as Ella calls her stepsisters. Now she’s living in the castle (in the guise of a foreign princess unfamiliar with local customs), being trained for her new status in preparation for the wedding under the ruthless domination of Madame Bisset, her instructor in etiquette and protocol. Ella is never allowed outside the castle and sees the Prince only briefly, once a day, with a chaperone. Her only relief comes from clandestine frank conversations with a serving maid and Jed Reston, who’s tutoring Ella in religion as a substitute for his ailing father. Jed has ambitious plans to establish care centers for refugees from their country’s long-running war with a neighboring realm, while Ella has escaped from a life of drudgery into one of stifling dullness. She gradually realizes the Prince is boring and empty-headed. In fact, it dawns on her that she has never been in love with him, only dazzled by his charm and good looks. But how can she get out of the engagement? Her attempts to assert herself, naturally, make matters worse, until she lands in a desperate plight where her only recourse is to flee the castle and become a fugitive. Despite the absence of magic, I found this novel enthralling and its conclusion completely satisfying.

A WIZARD’S GUIDE TO DEFENSIVE BAKING, by T. Kingfisher. This YA fantasy novel set in a secondary world is quite different in tone and content from Kingfisher’s superb adult horror novel THE TWISTED ONES. The only obvious similarity is that both are narrated in first person by female characters with distinctive, witty voices. Fourteen-year-old orphaned teenager Mona works in her aunt’s bakery. Mona’s baking talent encompasses more than mundane skills. In this world, many people have magical gifts, although more often small and specialized than big and flashy, and Mona can do amazing things with dough. She entertains customers by making gingerbread men dance, and she has one long-lived animated gingerbread figure she keeps as a sort of pet. Her other mascot is a bucket of sentient sourdough starter named Bob. He’s kept in the basement because of his habit of eating animals that stray within his reach. As the story begins early one morning, Mona finds a dead girl on the bakery floor. Local law enforcement takes Mona into custody for questioning, and things get worse from there. Following her release after many hours, she’s attacked by ten-year-old Spindle, brother of the murdered girl. After Mona convinces him of her and her family’s innocence, the two of them team up to uncover the truth. A mysterious figure known as the Spring Green Man seems to be involved. Magic-users have been disappearing or dying. Aside from Mona herself, one of the few left in the city is Molly, a kindly but deranged woman whose gift is animating dead horses; she wanders around with a dried-up, nearly skeletal zombie horse. Meanwhile, their city-state is at war, and the authorities are cracking down on magical folk. In desperation, Mona and Spindle eventually sneak into the castle to appeal to the Duchess herself. As the plot thickens, Mona gets unwillingly involved in combat and discovers extraordinary uses for the baking magic she’s always considered minor and ordinary. While fast-paced and entertaining, with moments of humor, this novel also delves into issues such as the nature of responsibility and heroism.

BRYONY AND ROSES, by T. Kingfisher. In this 2016 fantasy, Kingfisher retells “Beauty and the Beast” with some variations unique to her. As in Robin McKinley’s ROSE DAUGHTER (whose influence Kingfisher cites), the heroine is an avid gardener, and roses play a central role. Bryony, however, far from beautiful, is the plainest of the three sisters, a pragmatic young woman whose third-person narrative viewpoint is tart, self-aware, and tinged with snark. Unlike the heroines of other versions, she doesn’t much care for roses, considering them more trouble than they’re worth and often outright vicious (all those thorns). The backstory follows the usual pattern, a widowed merchant losing all his wealth and property except for a cottage in a remote village, where he retires with his three daughters. In this novel, both parents have died already, leaving the young women on their own. Bryony’s sisters are affectionate and hardworking rather than vain and jealous as in the classic tale. Holly is as practical and astringent as Bryony, while Iris is beautiful, delicate, and romantic. As the novel opens, it’s Bryony who gets stuck in a snowstorm and takes refuge, with her pony, in the mysterious, palatial manor house. After being feasted and sheltered, she tries to take a rose for Iris, provoking the Beast’s wrath. She delivers a chest full of coins to her home, packs a supply of plants and seeds, and returns to the Beast’s mansion. The house proves to be sentient and eagerly helpful almost to the point of smothering. As she cultivates her garden and grows to care for the Beast, she finds that he can’t talk about the crucial elements of his past. The magic forcibly prevents him. As in some earlier adaptations, she dreams of a seductive man. Both the dreams and the house itself, though, have sinister undertones. This version is darker than any other I’ve seen or read, with a climax verging on horror. The Beast’s origin story reveals him as neither an innocent victim of a malicious curse (as in the familiar fairy tale) nor a selfish brute needing to reform (as in the Disney version). He did bring his punishment upon himself, but the penalty was disproportionate to the offense, and he has long since repented and matured. The background of his transformation—and that of the house—is eerie and otherworldly. To my delight, he doesn’t revert to human form at the end. That denouement has always felt like a letdown to me, no matter how well written or acted.

*****

Excerpt from KITSUNE ENCHANTMENT:

“What kind of babies would Raptor and Vixen produce if they did mate? Winged fox cubs hatched from eagle eggs?” He polished off the last of his cake.

“I’m almost tempted to write that scenario just to see you draw it.” To avoid the sight of Ryo licking chocolate from his fork, Shannon concentrated on finishing her dessert, too.

“Considering the fans of a certain major film franchise don’t seem to have a problem with dragon-donkey hybrids, it’s not so farfetched.”

He set his empty box on the coffee table, then took hers from her and did the same with it. Turning toward her, he clasped her hand before she could withdraw it.

His skin felt fever-hot, a heat that radiated up her arm. On the other hand, like he said, sometimes we should live dangerously. She swayed closer to him.

“Magic,” he murmured. “Magic can do almost anything.”

He cupped her cheek with his free hand. He leaned in, giving her plenty of time to draw back if she chose.

She didn’t. Instead, she parted her lips, waiting. His lips brushed hers. The heat spread over her whole body and flared at her core. His tongue teased hers, and she twined one arm around his neck. Her nipples peaked and tingled. Twisting sideways to close the space between them, she couldn’t suppress a sigh of pleasure when he drew her into a loose embrace that tightened as she snuggled up to him.

Her eyes drifting shut, she ran her fingers through the dense pelt of his hair while he deepened the kiss. Waves of sensation rippled through her. As she moved her hand downward to skim over his cheek, fuzz tickled her palm. Whiskers? Surely she would have noticed if he’d been unshaven. Besides, this growth felt more like velvet than sandpaper. She opened her eyes.

Ryo flinched and pulled back. In the twilit dimness relieved only by the light from the overhead fixture just inside the door, his skin definitely looked lightly furred. Not only that, his teeth looked, well—sharp. She scooted to the end of the couch.

Ryo snapped his mouth shut and covered it with one hand. Springing to his feet, he mumbled, “Sorry—not feeling well all of a sudden. I’ll see you tomorrow morning. Sorry!” He scurried to the bathroom and slammed the door.

Staring after him, Shannon stood up, suddenly lightheaded, and gripped the back of the couch to steady herself. What’s gotten into him? And his ears—why do they look the wrong shape?

Did he expect her to leave just like that? Assuming he was actually sick, he would have asked for help if he’d wanted it. So, yes, he apparently did expect her to clear out. Well, she wasn’t about to beg him to let her stay. Tears prickling her eyes, she grabbed her purse and stomped out.

-end of excerpt-

*****

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Writers Exchange E-Publishing: Writers Exchange
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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