New urban fantasy WIP!

First seen on the Space Trash Blog.

Death is for the Living - Prologue:

Everything was dark, but this time, she was sure she was awake. There was a damp breeze on her cheek, and a soft surface under her. By contrast, her body was burning. The air smelled of earth and rot and wet leaves, and it was silent except for her own raucous breathing.

She lay there until she began to wonder if it wasn’t another fever dream, and then flinched as a voice broke the silence a little way away.

“And she was the only one, you sure of that?” It was a woman’s voice, with an Islands accent, slow and unhurried; not one she had heard before.

There was a pause, one that reeked of reluctance, and a male voice replied. “Alone and unbound, and several kilometres from the house. I thought she must be a fledgling, but...” his voice trailed off, a faint French accent evocative enough that she could almost feel the shrug.

“Not yet,” the woman’s voice agreed, and her tone was darker, grimmer. “You think she has the strength for this fight, boy, or are we just saving trouble for later?”

“I think she will stop fighting when she is dead, this one,” the man’s voice said. There was rock-solid certainty under his tone, such utter surety that she wished, briefly, that she were that sure. Absent memories, vision shut down, and fever tearing through her, fighting seemed about as impossible as levering her eyelids open.

Her throat was bone-dry, and she longed for liquid even through her throat and neck felt as though they had been savaged. She couldn’t remember why that might be.

She was suddenly aware that there was a presence beside her, blocking the flow of air, and a hand clamped onto her shoulder. It triggered a flash of rage and thirst combined, and it was enough to let her move, to flinch away, swing her arm. She had almost bitten him, and couldn’t remember why that would be a bad idea.

He was long gone by the time her retaliation completely failed to connect, the cooling breeze again moving over her face. It made the thirst worse.

Through the pounding in her ears she heard his voice: “Tu vois. She fought; she did not bite.”

There was a rustle of cloth. “Indeed I see. Make sure it her struggle you see and not your own. If she survives she may not thank you for it.”

There was a longer pause, as her heartbeat slowed and the lancing pains from the movement quieted with it, and she wondered absently why he didn’t just walk out. His desire to do so was almost as thick in the room as the smell of the jungle.

“Then let her choose,” he said at last. “She has earnt that much, at least, non?”

Get Inspired: Week 8

First seen on the Space Trash Blog.

 

Invocation error (Get Inspired, week 8)

Error: you have cast an undefined invocation.

"Told you the pentagram was too wiggly," Toluk muttered. I glared in his general direction. The damned neon error message that had engraved itself on my retinas meant that I didn't have a precise directional lock, but I did my best to sight back along that self-righteous comment.

"You were the ass who said clockwise, schmockwise."

Frankly, anytime I actually need the blood of a real virgin for something, Toluk's the one I'm going to use. With that attitude, no way he gets laid. Not to mention, I'm pretty sure I'd have queues of volunteers to hold him down.

Anyway, the decidedly icky topic of Toluk's virginity aside, I wasn't any closer to Frogs in the Bogs. The way this invocation was going, I might just about manage to give someone with a particularly bad case of diarrhea a mild French accent for half an hour.

Whichever idiot said magic was a shortcut should try powdering bulrushes; I swear I laminated my sinuses with them after the first few minutes.

Oddly enough, this one was inspired by work.:)

Yeah, no, my work isn't that interesting, but like pretty much every other company we have a team who looks after our computers. They call it upgrades, I call it bi-monthly opportunity to find out about error messages that I didn't know existed. Including: 'You have cast an invocation in error. Please contact your administrator."

Get Inspired: Week 3

First seen on the Space Trash blog.

Immortality doesn't mean you'll live forever...(Get Inspired, week 3)

The peaches of immortality ripen only once in every three thousand years. If you find and eat one, you're guaranteed near-immortality. Not unnaturally, the business interests whom I represent would like the opportunity to acquire some. Imagine Hollywood able to buy everlasting good looks? Hell, we could buy some more property. Mars, maybe.

I took another look through my scope, and sighed. Why do people always imagine that immortality means that they're invulnerable as well? Of course, I would never threaten to shoot the Jade Emperor, but this guy wasn't him. Not the Heavenly Grandfather, and most definitely not one of the Three Pure Ones. If he were, the apparent age of the scantily-dressed schoolgirl in his lap would've disqualified him on the spot. This guy, I wouldn't have any qualms about threatening, although not actually carrying through might be tough.

I spent a moment meditating. Fine. I spent a moment remembering how much I stood to make by not shooting the old pervert. Ancient pervert, if the rumours I'd spent the last few years chasing were slightly more accurate than the last ten or twenty times. About 2,983 years old, to be precise. My little pep talk motivated me to fold up my shooting perch and drop down to street-level like a good girl, rather than leaving brain particles ingrained in the wall behind him that someone would have to clean up.

After all, if the guy temporarily still in possession of his brain matter wanted another 3,000 years of fondling teenagers, he was going to have to pick up some supplies soon. When he did, perhaps I could persuade him to take me along. Persuasion is my business. Being part-siren helps. Carrying enough metal on my person to never be able to fly commercial often helps more.

Where did this one come from? 

Actually, the initial line came from Pawn In Frankincense by Dorothy Dunnett. I'd been meaning to research that particular reference for a couple of decades, and finally got around to doing it. The underlying story of the peaches of immortality was so adaptable to a modern urban fantasy setting that I couldn't help myself.

Were Clans of the Northwest

As well as sci-fi, I also drop in occasionally on urban fiction and outright fantasy.

One of my one-off novels, which I have a feeling is going to turn into a series, is currently a completed Draft 0. Right now, it's running under the stunningly original working title of 'Cat Were', and isn't admitting much more than that.

However, I put up some of that Draft 0 on one of my other blogs, in segments, and it met with a very positive amount of reading. If you want to read the first few installments, the link will take you there. Fairly self-evidently (I hope) the earliest post is the start of the book.

It's due up for editing once I finish work on the second book in the Cortii series, which is currently at the 87% loading stage and sucking down most of my run time, invention and energy.

Meet Katrin Summers, Canadian, outdoors enthusiast, introvert (sounds better than anti-social), native of Vancouver's North Shore, and a were cat. Don't make the "Cat? Where?" joke. It's been done. To death, in some cases.

Katrin is a peacekeeper for the were cats of the Northwest. In her own words, she goes out looking for trouble to put down. The elders, bastions of clan tradition, aren't particularly thrilled that Katrin will work with wolves, witches and even living legends to solve a case ...

*****

Cat Were

So, there's something a little odd about me. Fine, there's several things a little odd about me. This one's odder than most of the things you find out about people after one too many drinks, though. A lot of people make jokes about their wild side. Mostly, I don't. When your wild side weighs in at little over the average cougar, and comes equipped with claws that can take someone's throat out, bragging seems a bit superfluous. Not to mention not a great idea. I mean, someone who staggers into a police station right now and starts talking about watching a woman turn into a mountain lion, they'll probably let him cool off overnight in the drunk tank. Make a fact public domain, and suddenly everyone starts asking nosy questions.

It's a trend right now to be fascinated by the supernatural - vampires, mostly, but weres, magic, voodun, anything that would definitely have got you excommunicated to kebab flambé a century or so ago. It's a damn nuisance. Most of the fans are harmless in fact if not design, but the intelligence agencies? They're a real pain. Especially because I feel so guilty about propping up the stereotype of snoopy.... well, snoops, let's face it, employed by one or other of the so-called free world's democratic governments, hanging out in my brambly backyard trying to catch me out. I hate feeling guilty. I'd say it was the were-cat thing, but if truth must be told, it's probably just me.

So someone's going to ask: if I like my privacy that much, why am I writing a book? Why now? Good questions. Probably because most of the fantasy books out there are just so wrong, it makes my hair stand on end, and depending on which form I'm in, that can be pretty spectacular.