Projects

This is a list of my current projects and something about their origins.

CASCADIAN'S BLIGHT

This is the book I'm currently shopping to agents in the next few months.

This urban fantasy originated in, believe it not, fan fiction, more than twenty years ago. I'd just gotten off a two year writer's block (I'd burned myself out trying screenwriting), and got into fan fiction because I didn't have to worry about writing good enough for publication. After about three stories though, I realized that I didn't like writing someone else's characters. A story developed off the characters I made up, and that's when Keymas was created. Keymas was probably named after actor George Keymas, and originally he was a bad guy.

A few years ago, I realized that I had to change genres from thriller to urban fantasy (thriller had changed in ways that I didn't like). That meant I had to come up with a new idea. Suddenly I realized that it had been sitting there for decades, so I took the idea and turned it into MAGIC STUD. The story then not only originally came from fandom, but also brought a lot of my experiences from fandom. I was friends with an actor, so I didn't get all starry-eyed every time an actor passed by. One day I was at a convention talking with this guy, and an actress walks up. I'm thinking that I really liked the color of her dress, and the guy is pretty close to falling on his knees to worship her. Afterwards, he was upset because I didn't have the same reaction. So I put that kind of craziness in the story, as part of an assassin being a celebrity.

The story itself does not contain vampires, werewolves, or anything supernatural. It's a treasure hunt with magic, paparazzi, celebrities, and politics. What else could a writer who has lived in both Los Angeles and Washington, DC do?

A few links to some of the things I researched for the book:

Googie (not Google!), a style of architecture popular in Southern California in the 1960s, but now a lot of the buildings have been torn down.

How many eyes does a spider have? Turns out it looks pretty gross. Just scroll down this page for a close-up picture.

The house that Havilah built. I used this historical house as a basis for the one the main character lives in. The real house was completed in 1887 and is on the state and national historical registers. It's being featured in book due to be released in 2010.

AURORA CALIFORNIA

This is the book next on the plate.

When I was growing up, we used to go to Morro Bay in Central California to visit my grandparents. We'd always go out on the beach and find sand dollars, mussels, and clams, so seashells have been a fascination with me. I started playing around with the idea of magic and seashells.

Then I reread a couple of Phyllis A. Whitney's books and realized I wanted to try a gothic aspect and make the setting an important part of the story. At which point my father called and said, "They just made a major drug bust! You'll never guess where!" Given that he lives in an area where drug busts are common, I guessed, "Morro Bay." It's a small fishing village and not much happens there. I was also right--the drug bust did happen there. So that got me into thinking about Morro Bay for my setting.

A few links to some of the things I researched:

Morro Bay Photo Gallery. Very nice selection of photos of Morro Bay.

Sierra Club's Nine Sisters of San Luis Obispo County. No, they're not women. They're volcanic plugs.

Morro Rock. Can't do Morro Bay without Morro Rock.