Cool news

It's common knowledge that my editor, the fabulous Anne Sowards, has asked for steampunk. What you may not know is this: eight years ago, I wrote a steampunk novel with my husband called Bronze Gods. It's a dark, lush dangerous world set in what we'd call fairy. Only "under the hill" isn't the pastoral utopia it once was.

Because there are fairly regular crossings (once every hundred years or so), our technology has gradually infiltrated the other world. So when steam ships go missing, well, that's where they've gone. The original population, the Ferishers--what we'd call the Seelie and Unseelie--have long since interbred with the humans who crossed over. Now there are no pure bloods left, and there are noble houses formed on the basis of how much Ferisher blood is left in their lineage. Ferisher blood permits their human descendants to work small magics and cast glamours. The fey who refused to share their world with the interlopers fell into the Fade; their bodies withered and died, leaving them hungry, angry spirits that haunt the countryside. Some citizens can summon those spirits and use them to gain strength and power.

In this book, there's murder, mayhem, dark rituals, theatre, forbidden romance, a dark lord who has been called the King of Spiders, a drug-addicted gray knight who works as a cop, and a genealogist who is cursed with sensing lies.

Sound good?

Well, Anne wants to see it. How cool is that?