Can you tell readers a little bit about
yourself and what inspired to write in this particular genre?
I love stories about ghostly
happenings and incursions of other worlds into this one. I also love stories
about periods of social change. I was excited to find a way to combine the two.
What is it about the paranormal, in
particular vampires, that fascinates you so much?
The paranormal speaks to the idea
that this world is more than what the senses can fully take in, which means the
world inside us is too. If you cock your head or open your ears at
just the right moment, you can catch a glimpse
or note of something transcendent.
What inspired you to write this
book?
Initially, I was moved by Edith
Wharton's stories of the social changes experienced by the New York upper crust
during the Gilded Age. Mark Helprin's Winter's Tale encouraged me to think about that theme in conjunction with the idea
of the supernatural co-existing with the real world and occasionally invading
it.
Please tell us about your latest
release.
Spellcaster takes
place mostly in an alternate fin de siècle England and concerns Christine Daniel, a debutante on the verge of adulthood.
She has everything going for her except a debilitating illness and the
paranormal visions that seem to cause them. During the London Season, Allie,
her older sister and the family heir, seeks a match among the English
aristocracy while she searches the occult underground for answers. The only witch
who can help is an aristocrat named Lady Kinloss whose great powers have not
helped her social standing. Unfortunately for Christine, Kinloss won't do so
unless Christine cajoles Allie into marrying her lover, Lord Serton, another
impoverished aristocrat, so that the illicit pair can share Allie's inheritance.
Christine is forced into a Hobson's choice between betraying her sister and
saving her own life.
Do you have a special formula for
creating characters' names? Do you try to match a name with a certain meaning
to attributes of the character or do you search for names popular in certain
time periods or regions?
I have used a few obscure historical
personages in my book. My villain Lady Kinloss, for example, is more or less
real, though, as far as I know, her historical counterpart did not practice
witchcraft or scheme with married lovers. Her name happens to be evocative and
appropriate for her, but otherwise my choices of names are arbitrary.
Was one of your characters more
challenging to write than another?
No. All of them came easily to me
this time.
Is there a character that you
enjoyed writing more than any of the others?
Christine. She is very much part of
her world and yet something about her stands apart.
Do you
have a formula for developing characters? Like do you create a character sketch
or list of attributes before you start writing or do you just let the character
develop as you write?
The characters develop as I write, always. I don't follow
any formula, being simply content to let their actions play out on the page as
I am sure they would in real life.
What is your favorite scene from the
book? Could you share a little bit of it, without spoilers of course?
Perhaps odd concerning a supernatural
fantasy, but my favorite scene contains no element of the paranormal. Christine
catches Allie and the dastardly Lord Serton alone together in a bedroom during
a party that has gotten a little out of control. At this juncture the pair are
innocent – Serton is only showing Allie some artwork -- but Christine,
protective and perhaps a little priggish, assumes the worst and promptly lets
Allie have it.
Did you find anything really
interesting while researching this or another book?
Besides the historical Lady Kinloss,
the obscure rituals Christine engages in are mostly based on rites outlined in grimoires
like The Book of the Sacred Magic of
Abramelin the Mage and practiced by
magicians going back to Mesopotamia. Most of the architectural and social
details are also accurate, as is the picture of the occult culture Christine
and Lady Kinloss operate in.
What is the most interesting thing
you have physically done for book related research purposes?
My physical labors are confined to
diving into the most obscure texts I can find in libraries and online.
Can you tell readers a little bit
about the world building in the book/series? How does this world differ from our
normal world?
I kept as much as the real world as
I could, to make the supernatural all the more convincing. Most of the occult
material is only a little altered from source texts.
Do any of your characters have
similar characteristics of yourself in them and what are they?
Except for Christine's slight priggishness,
none of my characters share my personality traits. I write to get away from
myself as much as possible.
Do you ever suffer from writer’s
block? How do you deal with it?
Never. If anything, more stories
seem to slip away from me than I can commit to paper.
Do you have any weird writing quirks
or rituals?
None. I wonder if this in itself
isn't a quirk.
Do you write in different genres?
Yes, all of them. My next book will
be a historical fantasy.
Do you find it difficult to write in
multiple genres?
Genre is only another set of tools,
like style and varieties of character. The present story dictates the genre,
never the other way around.
When did you consider yourself a
writer?
Always. As opposed to what? I don't
know what it is to not identify as a writer.
What are your guilty pleasures in
life?
I have a yen for classic bad movies,
but given how cool Rifftrax has made them, I'm not sure how guilty those
pleasures are.
Other than writing, what are some of
your interests, hobbies or passions in life?
Anime, manga and Asian art cinema,
particularly classics of the Taiwanese new wave and China's Fifth Generation.
What was the last amazing book you
read?
The Tale of Genji, which may be the best novel I've ever read
besides Proust's vast fairy tale and Cao Xueqin's Story of the Stone.
Where is your favorite place to
read? Do you have a cozy corner or special reading spot?
There is nothing like reading in bed
in the dead of night while classical music softly pipes from your stereo.
What can readers expect next from
you?
A fantasy which will be closely
based on historical events while managing to take more liberties.
Where can readers find you on the
web?
Would you like to leave readers with
a little teaser or excerpt from the book?
I had to
wait till Wednesday before dawn, since that was the time of the daemon I must
supplicate. Even on Lady Kinloss’s property I would not dare be caught with the
package I carried under my arm with such anxiety that perspiration on my arms
and chest greased it from my grip several times and I nearly rolled it like a
bowling ball into the lone boulder- and birch-enclosed grotto I had chosen. I
sat on a large flat boulder jutting out over the stream that ran past the
grotto. My limbs trembled, my eyes swam with fear so that looking through birch
trees at the twilight-shaded fields and streams around it was difficult; but
always a restless, frantic impulse urged me on, often as a voice talking me
though too many moral recriminations and imagined horrors of getting caught by
a stray squire or fisherman. Despite all that I did maintain reasonable
self-control. I would not let myself think of my time nearly two hours ago at
St. Paul’s churchyard. The air was as damp, and cold as it was now, as my
heart, and a freezing drizzle started to fall. Slight as it was it soaked the
earth by the front gate and the dirt caking my shovel and burlap sack into mud.
The breeze slapped the surrounding broad leaves into my face and showered fine
dust down my cloak and hood. The sight of the watchman kept me frozen in place,
or rather his torchlight casting shadows across the tombs and the charnel-house
beyond them I needed to investigate. My stupid mind wondered if rain makes mud
softer or harder. The hands on my timepiece hardly seemed to move. The
implements in the sack poked my lap. I wondered if I should have taken a
lighter shovel from Lady Kinloss’s work shed. By bellonsphere my lady had
assured me he would vanish at three o’clock and allow the new Provençal friend
of his best customer thirty lonely minutes, enough time, as long as the honest
old coot could say he had not seen said friend. As long as no one came along
the street out of the half-dark, defying what the eyes told. As long as my
nerve held out and I did not flee around the corner to the horse tied to the
broken lamppost there. As long as I kept still and waited for whatever
mysterious impulse would finally take him out of my way already.
After an
age, he moved off from the charnel-house. One push at the gate told me he’d
already left it open, the sadistic tease, and I slipped through it dripping wet
splotches of filthy water behind me like a damned soul tracking mud into
Charon’s boat. Nobody around. Leaving the gate nearly shut behind me, I scoured
the graves in the right section of the churchyard over and over in the dark.
Then the freshly turned earth of the grave my lady had had her glimmer-man mark
for me kicked up and settled on my shoes, my burlap sack, and the hem of my
cloak. I hoped the four feet between me and what I needed did not prove too
challenging. I did not have time to dig around the six-by-four containment if
they did.
Not
wanting to impose more than I had already, I had refused my lady’s offer of her
glimmer-man—her lookout, though I couldn’t imagine why she’d need one for—to
keep watch on the street with his torch. I hunched over the headstone and with
my shovel made a small cut in the earth the width of the grave. Thank God the
mud proved soft, easy to dig down and down into without too much disturbance of
the soil.
A thud
and the shovel scraped something. I brushed stray dirt from the lid and swung
down hard into the top of the coffin. The crack of the old wood exploded in the
wet, sweet air like gunpowder and the stench of rotting meat welled up. The
noise froze me except my eyes which bulged in the direction the watchman had
gone. I didn’t know how much time passed before my heart suddenly relieved at
no one appearing unfroze my body, allowed me to smash in the lid. It gave way
and no one came screaming from the street.
From the
sack I took the rope and the hook, which were already fastened to each other. I
took a deep breath inside my cloak and dropped the hook into the black hole and
reached in with my other hand. When I felt the chin I slipped the hook into the
soft spot between the throat and the jaw. A gentle push, then a tug, then a
push and the steel plopped into the flesh and bone. “Streng verboten” I muttered, and as hard as I could, my biceps
aching from the words I’d put into them, I arched back and yanked the rope.
The
flesh-tattered head of the nameless man or woman popped up through the crack in
the lid. What little flesh hung off it was alabaster in the torch-spotted
blackness. Stench boiled at my face, a whoosh of air. My stomach heaved me to
the ground. I gasped into the sour-tasting earth. My nostrils sucked up holy
ground.
I did
not need to strip the ancient body so I’d only brought a panel hacksaw, no
scissors. For the hair I merely yanked the few remaining strands and threw them
to the side. I grasped the knotted neck as far from the chin as possible and
ignored the harsh scrape of metal on bone, so difficult proved the labor. The
head snapped off. I dropped the saw to chase the head over the tombstone.
Carefully
I placed the head, shovel, hook, and hacksaw in the sack. I shoved the ruined
neck bone back into the coffin and packed soil over it until it looked
undisturbed. I checked the street all along the gate, smoothing over my tracks,
and then ran for the horse, hardly feeling the weight of the sack.
No, I
would not think about that. It did not matter where the head I placed on the ground
came from.
From an
inside pocket in my cloak I scooped out five black beans. One went into the
dead thing’s mouth, two in its eyes, and two in its ears. From that same pocket
I drew a charcoal pen I hoped had not ruined the cloak in my haste. Hoping I
correctly remembered the instructions in the grimoire I’d consulted, I drew an
unspeakable figure on its face and pointed the face toward heaven. The drizzle
smeared the figure a little, but that did not matter.
Not
trusting my tear-blurred eyes, I scuttled back until I pushed up against one of
the surrounding boulders to make sure I had sufficient room between me and the
skull.
Starting from the skull’s chin and working my way backward I inscribed
into the damp brown mud deeply enough to be seen: SCABOLES, HABRION, ELÆ, ELIMIGIT, GABOLII, SEMITRION, MENTINOBOL,
SABANITEUT, HEREMOBOL, CANE, METHÉ, BALUTI, CATEA, TIMEGUEL, BORA.
The
dampness did not obscure the charcoal, even after a few moments of that
drizzle. I put the pen back in my pocket and knelt before the skull, coolness
seeping through the cloak onto my knees.
“O Ye Spirits of Invisibility, I conjure and
constrain you incontinently and forthwith to consecrate this experiment, so
that, surely and without trickery, I may go invisible.
Furthermore, I conjure
you by your prince, by the obedience which you owe to him and by the power of
God, incontinently to aid me by consecrating this experiment, without loss of
my body or my soul. So be it, so be it, so be it.”
I did
not have nine days to tease out the spirit with brandy and constant prayers so
I gave the skull something daemons prefer anyway. I opened the vein in my right
wrist, opened deeply, and squeezed blood upon the teeth and skinless mouth. The
pain was nothing next to my fear at that damned brightening sky.
Without
moving its mouth, the skull suddenly asked in a bored, nasal voice as deep as
mine sometimes got, “What doest thou?”
Daemons
and their damned feigned ignorance and need for ceremony. “I am watering my
plant,” I repeated the formula, trying not to stir impatiently.
“Give me your arm, I will water it myself.”
My arm
was on fire. I kept squeezing even when that fire became sharp pangs. “No!” I
snapped.
After a
few minutes of tedious back and forth when I was ready to give the whole thing
up and leave Sir Tomas’s two friends to rot, an arm-shaped fog finally reached
out of the skull’s mouth and drew in the air the same figure I’d traced upon
the head.
I
sighed. “So it is you and not some other who’s come to take advantage of me.
“Take those wretched beans out of me and put them in
your mouth if you like them so much. Yew!”
“Will it work?”
“Yes, yes. After the bean, go look in the water and
see that you have what you’ve asked for.”
I
transferred a bean from its mouth to mine and bent over the nearest stream.
Nothing but the fish feeding at the stream’s bottom looked back at me; I could
not see myself.
“Everyone but you will be able to see you without
effort,” the skull said tiredly, in the voice of one that had fulfilled this
request so many times that a supplicant’s particular needs no longer excited
his curiosity. “A side-effect, but if you want to hide from the one who hunts
you, you’ll just have to put up with it. You will have to picture yourself in
your mind to view your image in a mirror, though it will only be from your
mind. But the one you cloak yourself from cannot see you until Sir Tomas, your
past self, returns to his time. Eat the rest of those wretched things or give
them to whoever else you would protect.”
“I have no one else.”
It must
have sensed I was about to ask about Rodham and Valerie, for it retorted, “Not
within my power!” and the fog of air exploded in the light rain. I made sure
I’d packed over the black words and sacked the skull for later disposal before
the sun really started to brighten and the fishermen’s dogs barked from
somewhere in the distance, sending me hence like a cock crow in reverse.
George Backman
Print Length: 262 pages
Publisher: Sublime Ltd.
Publication Date: April 3, 2017
ASIN: B06Y1FMY33
Christine Daniel suffers in ways no sixteen year-old should and that no doctor has been able to cure. That's because the excruciating pains and high fevers slowly debilitating her aren't triggered by a physical cause but by visions of a youth calling to her while fleeing a mysterious man who means him harm. This could hardly be happening at a worse time, when she and her beautiful older sister Allison are making their début in high society, like other wealthy socialites seeking matches with titled but impoverished gentlemen in Victorian England.
Because of his pleas, Christine is convinced that to stop the visions she must somehow save this youth. But first she has to find him, and since she's seen him only in visions, she needs someone who'd know how to locate someone through means outside the known senses, the paranormal.
Unfortunately the authorities have driven underground all but one of the country's occultists, and the reason she isn't hiding is the only reason she might help Christine, something she wants in return. Christine must convince Allison to marry the occultist's lover, one of those impoverished gentlemen, so that the illicit pair can share her part of the family fortune while continuing their affair.
If Christine doesn't stop the visions by saving the youth, the pains and fevers will eventually kill her. But if she does what the occultist wants, she will betray Allison to a lifetime of misery. Can she lead her sister into a marriage with a very bad man if doing so is the only way to save her own skin – literally?
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