Of Werewolves And Other Strangers

The Underground made the first cut in the American Breakthrough Novel Award (ABNA) contest. w00t!

So I thought I’d put up a few paragraphs from Kurt’s chapter.

Chapter 1

For the second time in less than six months, Kurt, vampire regent and Master of Seattle, was terrified.

He stood before a wall-sized, plate glass window on the fiftieth floor of an office tower in downtown Seattle. No one knew about his office here, not even Daniel, his executor, who ran the night-to-night operations of Kurt’s vampire colony. He maintained this office because it was occasionally necessary for him to attend to his many other commercial interests in Seattle in person, and he knew his more conservative associates would not appreciate conducting business in his main office beneath his Last Chance nightclub in Pioneer Square.

But that wasn’t all he used this office for. He also came here when he needed to be alone to think, to brood over the latest challenge confronting him—business or otherwise—away from the constant interruptions that running a nightclub entails.  Right now his downtown office was dark and the building deserted except for the security guards. That wasn’t surprising—not this late on a Sunday night.

This cannot be happening to me, he thought.

He was losing his powers, the ones that marked him as a regent, a prince among vampires. He’d heard about regents who’d lost their special abilities but the youngest of them had been over fifteen hundred years old. Subtracting the years he’d been alive, Kurt was just shy of five hundred and seventy years old dead. For a vampire, he wasn’t yet middle-aged.

He gazed down at the four cranes standing like skeletal sentries protecting their construction sites. His lips tightened into a disapproving frown. Those revolutionary idiots burned down nearly a quarter of my city last June. Equal rights for exotics is all well and good, but that won’t happen as long as humans outnumber us by a factor of ten. All those idiots managed to accomplish was nothing.

He looked up and saw more cranes in the distance. Like three of the four cranes below him, many of them were draped in flags bearing the logo for Smoot Construction, one of the businesses he owned. I donated it all–equipment, personnel, materials–so we could start rebuilding quickly. He smiled a little. That’s just one of the things I’ve done to help the recovery effort. And I’ve made sure everyone knows it.

His smile faltered. The reason for his largesse wasn’t just the prestige it brought him.  Centuries of experience had taught him that after a disaster, natural or otherwise, the best way for the people and the economy to recover was to put them to work. And so he had. Seattleites were repairing the damage at breakneck speed, but even so, Kurt suspected the psychological scars would remain for some time.  

Feeling hungry, the Master turned away from the window and walked over to his massive desk a few feet away. He picked up a bottle resting near the edge of the desktop and poured some of its contents into a large, heavy goblet nearby. When the goblet was full, he looked into its murky depths without expression. Then, bringing it to his lips, he upended his cup and drained it. With a grimace, he set it back on the desk and fixed it with a baleful stare. The drink had tasted terrible.

“Nothing like a pint of blood to ruin a perfectly good wine,” he muttered in disgust. Then he returned to the window, the drink’s lingering flavor still violating his taste buds. 

Or being dragged by the stirrups.  Some days it’s the one, other days…well, the other.

I’ve a question. Do you think the paranormal genre–witches, werewolves, vampires, etc.–has been saturated? I’ve heard several different opinions. Some have said new paranormal is “just more Goth we don’t need”, and others have said it doesn’t matter as long as the story has a new twist. What counts as a new twist?

Thoughts?

The title of this post almost says it all, except it’s not ch 3 in its entirety…

Chapter 3

Garrett Larkin, mage of Seattle’s Balthus Coven, stood before the great wooden door of a medieval chateau perched on a rocky outcropping. It was dark in the High Languedoc region in southern France, and the kerosene-lit iron sconces on either side of the door shed little light.

She stared at the aged wood with trepidation. Behind that door lay one of two things—salvation or damnation. The only question was which.

She shivered, then.

She banged the heavy iron knocker twice. Will he even see me? she thought. I didn’t call or anything. And the last time I saw him, I—

The old door creaked open. Garrett looked up, her eyes wide with fear and uncertainty. A cocoa-skinned man with graying hair, not much taller than her five foot four inches, stood in the doorway. His eyes widened. “Ma Déesse,” he said. “Garrett! What are you doing here?”

Garrett’s jaw worked, but no words came. “Feodor,” she finally cried, then burst into tears.

Feodor, her mage mentor when she was his young and headstrong apprentice, stepped forward and enveloped her in a warm, comforting hug. “Oh, ma cherie,” he said gently, “I understand.” He held her while Garrett sobbed on his shoulder. When her tears subsided, he released her and stepped back. “Come inside, cherie. Seattle is a long ways from here and I know you must be hungry. We’ll talk after we get you something to eat.”

Gazing into Feodor’s kind brown eyes, her hazel ones, puffy from crying, Garrett felt her first ray of hope since the awfulness of last night. “Th-thank you, Feo,” her voice hitched. “I was afraid—”

“Non,” Feodor said. “Eat first, talk later.” He picked up Garrett’s suitcase, and then stepped aside to allow her to enter. He set her suitcase down in the entrance hall and turned. “Follow me,” he said, beckoning.

Garrett smiled for the first time since she’d arrived, and followed Feodor into the chateau’s ancient kitchen. She looked around. It was just as she’d remembered it, with its massive fireplace, the stones blackened after centuries of use, and the iron cooking pots hanging on hooks nearby. From experience, she knew Feodor only used the fireplace for magickal brews that required heating with either coal or wood. Otherwise, the kitchen had most of the modern conveniences, the electricity supplied by a generator outside that ran on witch-power. 

Feodor indicated a chair at a scarred, rectangular table made of thick wooden planks. Garrett sat and watched as he put the kettle on for tea. Then he went to the refrigerator, took out a number of items, and set them on the counter. Reaching to his left, he selected a medium-sized knife from a nearby rack and got busy.

Garrett’s smile widened. Slim and spry, Feodor hadn’t changed a bit from the first time she’d met him over thirty years ago. Now she understood why speculation over Feodor’s true age was such a hot topic. Magick workers aged slowly, but they rarely lived beyond one hundred and twenty years. Feodor had left his youth far behind when Garrett had first arrived those many years ago, and from what she’d heard, by now he had to be at least two hundred years old. But whatever his age, Feodor was believed by many of their kind to be the most talented mage alive—“an entire coven unto himself,” she’d heard another witch say. Garrett considered herself lucky that he’d accepted her as his apprentice, especially since she’d been only twelve years old when her first coven in Ireland had sent her to him.

Okay, so I’m a week late. Better late than never.

For those of you unfamiliar with NaNoWriMo, it’s a sort of acronym for National November Writing Month. Actually, it’s not just national–it’s international. Might be intergalactic too, for all I know. Anyway, it’s a challenge for writers to complete a 50,000 word novel between November 1 and November 30. Doesn’t have to be polished. Doesn’t have to be well written. It just has to be written. Whether your chances of winning are big as day or slim to none and slim left town, it’s a great motivator. And it’s FUN.

Check out their website at nanowrimo.org!

Here’s a question for you: what do you think “genre-bending” means? Does it refer to the book itself? Or does it refer to an author who writes in more than one genre? I saw the latter term used in an online article, and just got to wonderin’.

What would you do if you accidentally found out your next-door neighbor was a preternatural? Say, a werecat. And let’s also say that if a zot is discovered, it’s instant death. Would you call the police? Animal control? What if the zot in question never bothered you at all, never posed any danger to you, or to anyone else for that matter? What then?  

What if that zot happened to be a relative? Your first cousin? Your aunt? Your mother? Would you call the cops then? Or would you go for the whole situational thing? “It’s okay to call the cops on my neighbor, but not on my mom.”

Whatch’all think?

Ah, I should have done my homework first. I submitted because I liked the name. Then, after submitting, I checked them against Preditors & Editors. Guess what. They’re a vanity press. They sent an email the other day asking for a ballpark figure of how many books I wanted to buy. Arrgh. Well, I won’t be buying any. I don’t want to buy my books. I want YOU to buy my books.

Makes sense, doesn’t it?

All right. I’ve figured out that quick press doesn’t allow you to do things like mess with fonts. I guess that’s why they call it quick–duh! Now I have to figure out how to import my stuff from blogspot, but you know what? I’m thinking about not doing that. There’s nothing wrong with maintaining two blogsites, now is there? We’re in agreement about that so all’s well.

I’ll be deleting this first entries after a week or so. This is a practice run. I’ll take good notes and tell you all about Philcon when I get back.

Well, I got the Wordpress thing going and…I don’t know what the hell I’m doing. Like, I want to get an “about” link on the main page, but I don’t see how to do it. And the sidebar only has room for two widgets? How bogus is that?

Time to call in the professionals…