Disquieting Visions – paranormal and fantasy realms

by Gail Z. Martin

My superpower is chasing squirrels.  Not the fuzzy kind, the mental kind.  I’m an “ooh, shiny!” kind of girl, but it’s not Tiffany’s bling that catches my eye, it’s usually something on the History Channel, or a footnote on Wikipedia, or a stray reference that I chase down “for authenticity’s sake.”

It starts out as a noble cause.  After all, as a writer, it’s important to fact-check.  That’s dangerous when you’re the kind of person who can go to the dictionary to look up a word and not come up for air for an hour because you’ve hopped from one interesting new word to another.  Fact checking is like that, too. I go out to look something up, and there’s a hyperlink to something that looks interesting, and –squirrel!–I keep reading, and then I click again, and again.  By the time I look up, I’d need a trail of bread crumbs to find my way back, but I’ve found some amazing new trivia.

The reason I consider my squirrel chases to be a superpower is that they’ve led to some of my best ideas.  Those intriguing links can take me places I would never have found on my own, and often, the elusive answer I was searching for shows up as I go from link to link.  When I get stuck on a point when I’m writing, I go looking for squirrels, starting on a related site and intentionally following a winding path of links until the light goes on in my head and serendipity strikes.

The power of squirrel lets my brain relax a bit so that it doesn’t seize up worrying about not finding the answer.  Squirrels also have the superpower to get into locked birdhouses and climb impossible surfaces to get what they want.  I’m not that acrobatic, but figuratively speaking, I am inspired by squirrel-like tenacity and adaptability.   Squirrels are also courageous.  They jump from limb to limb, and very rarely fall, even when the branch under them sways wildly.  They’re not so good at crossing busy streets, but then again, neither am I.

Reign of Ash, book two in the Ascendant Kingdoms Saga launches in April, 2014 from Orbit Books.  My new urban fantasy, Deadly Curiosities, comes out in July, 2014 from Solaris Books. I bring out two series of ebook short stories with a new story every month for just .99 on Kindle, Kobo and Nook—check out the Jonmarc Vahanian Adventures or the Deadly Curiosities Adventures.

by Gail Z. Martin

With my new novel Deadly Curiosities (Solaris Books, summer 2014), I make the jump to urban fantasy.  I’ve been writing epic fantasy for seven years, and will be continuing my Ascendant Kingdoms Saga books for Orbit with Reign of Ash in April, so I’ll really have a foot in both camps.  That’s like trying to ride two horses at once, which are each running at different paces.

I’ve read a lot from both epic and urban fantasy, but it was a bit of a switch shifting from third-person narrative for the epic books into first-person for the urban stories.  But I would say that the hardest part has been convincing myself that it’s ok to use modern phrases in the urban book since I worked so hard to become aware of them and avoid them in the epic books.

There are so many words and phrases that we use every day that do a great job of conveying exactly what we mean.  In normal conversation, we don’t worry about the origin.  In writing, it matters a lot.  There are a couple of etymology web sites that have become bookmarks on my computer because I am frequently checking to see when a word or phrase was first used, and how it was used.  For example, people have been puking since the Middle Ages, but they didn’t barf until recently.  And while they have been pissing for hundreds of years, it’s only in the last few decades that anyone has been pissed off.

It matters because the wrong word choice is an anachronism and it ruins the suspension of disbelief for the reader.  The right words take the reader deeper into the atmosphere of the book.  The wrong word yanks them out with a hook.

Since I’m a word junkie, I find this fun.  I collect cool words like other people collect shiny rocks.  So I’m overjoyed when I find a great period-authentic word that is exactly what I need.  The trick is to sprinkle those less familiar, but authentic, words so that they are enjoyable little bonuses instead of annoying readers by sending them to their thesaurus on every page.

With Deadly Curiosities, it’s also fun because the book is set in modern-day Charleston, SC, so there are some wonderful concepts and phrases unique to that area that help to set the mood.  And while visiting the Middle Ages to check out locations isn’t entirely possible (although it’s amazing how instructive it is to visit what’s left), scouting local spots in Charleston is easy and always a pleasure.

So there you have it–the hardest part is remembering to have characters speak in modern English.  Strange, but true!

Reign of Ash, book two in the Ascendant Kingdoms Saga launches in April, 2014 from Orbit Books.  My new urban fantasy, Deadly Curiosities, comes out in July, 2014 from Solaris Books. I bring out two series of ebook short stories with a new story every month for just .99 on Kindle, Kobo and Nook—check out the Jonmarc Vahanian Adventures or the Deadly Curiosities Adventures.

by Gail Z. Martin

I grew up around antiques.  My dad haunted antique shows and flea markets, dragging me with him on my childhood weekends.  Dad would go off on a quest for whatever he was looking for at that particular time, leaving mom and me to wander the aisle on our own.  Even back then, I remember being fascinated with the idea that these objects had a history of their own.

I would imagine what they had witnessed, what secrets they had overheard.  Perhaps a vintage evening purse had been to the opera or to Lincoln Center.  Maybe a piece of jewelry had been worn when the former owner met a dignitary, movie star, or other luminary.  To salvage the day from utter boredom, I would start concocting stories about what I saw and regale my mother with my imaginings.

Decades later, going to an antiques or collectibles sale became a stroll down memory lane.  I’d spot a piece of furniture that an aunt had owned, a vase that looked familiar from the home of a childhood friend, a dish or clock that I remembered from my youth.  My husband and I would laugh at how pieces donated to charity just to be rid of them were now fetching big money as “collectibles.”

Fast forward again, and I learned how much objects become a touchstone for memory as my husband and I had the task of cleaning out our childhood homes after our parents passed away.  Handling the family silverware, the good dishes, the table linens became almost sacramental as we remembered the events and people who had used them.  Surrounded by family members, someone would pause from cleaning out a cupboard or closet to hold out an item and say, “Wow, do you remember this?” Reminiscing became a way to honor the memory of those who were gone and to pass on those stories to the younger cousins and grandchildren.

Perhaps after all that, it was inevitable that I would come up with the concept behind my upcoming Deadly Curiosities urban fantasy series, which will debut from Solaris Books in the summer of 2014.  Cassidy Kincaide is a psychometric, someone who  can read the history of an object by touching it.  She runs Trifles & Folly, an antiques and curio shop in historic, haunted Charleston, South Carolina, whose real business is getting dangerous magical objects off the market before they cause disaster.

Over the years, I’ve seen a lot of strange, unnerving and odd items laid out for sale at antique shows.  I’m not worried about running out of fodder for tales about Cassidy and her team!  I’m excited about the chance to share her world with readers in Deadly Curiosities!

My new urban fantasy, Deadly Curiosities, comes out in July, 2014 from Solaris Books. I bring out two series of ebook short stories with a new story every month for just .99 on Kindle, Kobo and Nook—check out the Jonmarc Vahanian Adventures or the Deadly Curiosities Adventures.

by Gail Z. Martin

“May you live in interesting times,” is a Chinese curse.  Boring times may be well, boring, but they also tend to be stable, safe, and predictable.  All the things that make those times boring also make them less dangerous.

By contrast, “interesting” times are unstable, dangerous, unpredictable and in a constant state of flux.  Those times make for great fiction, but aren’t such fun to live through while everything is being decided.

In my Chronicles of the Necromancer series, Tris Drayke has the misfortune of living in interesting times.  The king’s murder touches off a chain of events that lead to Tris running for his life with a few close friends, trying to outwit bounty hunters and figure out how to unseat the despot who has usurped the throne.

The chaos that makes things interesting for the reader bring hardship and misery to Tris as he fights his way through a dangerous landscape where nothing is as it seems and no one can be trusted.  When times are “interesting,” rules change, old ways of doing things don’t work anymore, and there’s always a dangerous power grab as the chaos of the moment unseats the previous top dogs.

As society reshuffles itself, there are winners and losers, and the people who were on top under the old order rarely end up keeping their spots (or their heads).  Sometimes, the entire social order is upended, as when a country is overrun by invaders from a foreign country.  A natural disaster, a bad harvest, or a plague can bring down the mighty and raise the powerless, and when the dust settles, nothing is the way it had been.

Creating “interesting times” is one of the fun parts of being an author.  We love to torture our characters, and it’s a challenge to make things bad, then worse, then even worse to see what the character will make of it.  It’s also a great way to learn about your characters, because you won’t really know what they’re made of until they’re in hot water.  Some will turn out to be heroes.  Others will betray their friends, run from the fight, or sacrifice themselves for others.  Even we authors don’t always know for sure what’s going to happen until we put the characters in the situation and see what happens.

“Interesting times” are at the heart of great stories.  All stories focus on something that changes, or else there is no tension, no opportunity for growth.  So here’s to “interesting times”!

Reign of Ash, book two in the Ascendant Kingdoms Saga launches in April, 2014 from Orbit Books.  My new urban fantasy, Deadly Curiosities, comes out in July, 2014 from Solaris Books. I bring out two series of ebook short stories with a new story every month for just .99 on Kindle, Kobo and Nook—check out the Jonmarc Vahanian Adventures or the Deadly Curiosities Adventures.

By Gail Z. Martin

I love the quote, “Well-behaved women rarely make history.”  That’s true in the real world, but it’s always true in fantasy.

In my Chronicles of the Necromancer series, all of my female characters “aim to misbehave.”  Kiara Sharsequin may be the heir to the Isencroft throne, but when she needs to find a way to heal her father the king, and avoid an arranged marriage to a tyrannical monarch, she takes off on her own and breaks all the rules to find a solution.

Carina Jesthrata is a healer whose been making her own way since she and her twin brother, Cam, were cast out of their home because their neighbors feared that twins were bad magic.  Between Carina’s healer’s talent and Cam’s brawny size, they find work with a mercenary troop, and later with a traveling caravan.  It’s not the genteel life of a healer to a noble house, but it puts Carina in position to affect the future of the Winter Kingdoms.

Aidane is a serroquette, a ‘ghost whore,’ a medium who can permit a ghost to inhabit her body for an intimate reunion with a living lover.  She makes her way despite the Nargi priests who hunt down and kill the serroquettes. When she is caught, beaten and left for dead, her unlikely rescuers sweep Aidane up into intrigue in a war-torn kingdom, setting a chain of events into motion that put the fate of the new queen in Aidane’s hands.

In my Ascendant Kingdoms Saga, Kestel Falke is a spy, a courtesan and an assassin.  (It was the assassin part that earned her a one-way ticket to the Velant prison colony.)  Her fighting skills keep her alive and protect her within the brutal Velant prison, and her adaptability helps her survive was a colonist in the harsh Edgeland climate.  When magic fails, Kestel finds herself being the bodyguard and lover of the one man who might be able to put things right.

And in my Deadly Curiosities series, Cassidy Kincaide is the owner of Trifles & Folly, an antiques and collectibles store in Charleston, SC that is much more than in appears to be.  Cassidy is a psychometric, able to read the history of objects with a touch.  That comes in handy, because Trifles & Folly is the front for an organization dedicated to removing dangerous magical objects from circulation.  Cassidy’s work involves a fair amount of breaking and entering, and a certain level of subterfuge to keep the store’s real purpose under wraps. (You’ll see more of Cassidy in my story, ‘Retribution,’ in the Athena’s Daughters anthology, and in the new Deadly Curiosities series from Solaris books in 2014.)

If any of my heroines had been “well-behaved,” they would never have gotten into the situations that let them save the monarch, save the kingdom, or chart their own destiny.  By defying the norms of their culture, social class and circumstances, they break the constraints that would have kept them from coming into their full abilities and making a huge difference in the world.  Let’s hear it for women who misbehave!

Reign of Ash, book two in the Ascendant Kingdoms Saga launches in April, 2014 from Orbit Books.  My new urban fantasy, Deadly Curiosities, comes out in July, 2014 from Solaris Books. I bring out two series of ebook short stories with a new story every month for just .99 on Kindle, Kobo and Nook—check out the Jonmarc Vahanian Adventures or the Deadly Curiosities Adventures.