Guest Blog
Mixing History and Fantasy for Fun
By Gail Z. Martin
Charleston, SC is historic and haunted—a perfect place to set my Deadly Curiosities urban fantasy. The city is one of the oldest in the United States, and all that history creates plenty of plot bunnies for stories about ghosts, paranormal danger, monsters and curses! Best of all, I get to mix real history and fantasy elements to weave a fun, spooky story.
Tangled Web is the third novel in my Deadly Curiosities urban fantasy series, set in Charleston, SC. In the series, main character Cassidy Kincaide is a psychometric—someone who can read the history and magic of objects by touching them. She owns Trifles and Folly, a 350 year old antique shop that is a cover for an alliance of mortals and immortals that keep the world safe from supernatural threats.
I’m a history geek. I majored in history in college, have always read books about history and watched documentaries, and I am very happy any time I get to spend an afternoon (or a whole day) at a museum or wandering around a living history site. I also love Charleston, with its beautiful architecture, rich and troubled background, and status as one of the most haunted cities in North America. So I truly enjoy the research that goes into writing a series that draws on folklore and real history, weaving them together to tell a story that I hope will keep readers on the edge of their seats.
I usually start with the germ of an idea about where I want the plot to go. Then I dig into the research. It might be about something like pirates, blockade runners, missing Civil War treasures, or mysterious disappearances. From there, I feel like I’m following a trail of breadcrumbs as I find an intriguing article, book, website, photo or blog post that leads me to another and another. Often, I discover marvelous and real details that lend authenticity to the story and are perfect for the plot. Sometimes the stuff that really happened is weirder than what you can make up!
Of course, with a city like Charleston, there are so many old buildings and landmarks that I can create a deeper sense of believability by using real places—and sometimes, historic people—in the stories. It’s fun to be able to share photos with my readers when I visit Charleston and let them know that the building, street corner, or location were the ones I mentioned in the books! (I have plenty of photos from all the cities I write about on my Pinterest boards!)
My Deadly Curiosities books are urban fantasy, so magic and the supernatural lurk right beneath the surface. It’s amazing how many factual events can be tweaked just a little to fit into a ghost story, or a tale that involves a curse, haunting or paranormal danger. In a city like Charleston, many real locations are believed to be haunted, and the city itself, for all its beauty, has periods of darkness in its past. I gather that historical information, and start to ask ‘what if?’ After that, my imagination takes over, and therein hangs a tale!
Tangled Web
Deadly Curiosities
Book Three
Gail Z. Martin
Genre: Urban Fantasy
Publisher: SOL Publishing
Date of Publication: May 10, 2018
ISBN: 978-1939704719
ASIN: B07D1C6Y55
Number of pages: 242
Word Count: 73,000
Cover Artist: Lou Harper
Tagline: Keeping Charleston—and the world—safe from supernatural threats one cursed object at a time!
Book Description:
Cassidy Kincaide runs Trifles & Folly in modern-day Charleston, an antiques and curios shop with a dangerous secret. Cassidy can read the history of objects by touching them and along with her business partners Teag, who is a Weaver witch and Sorren, a 600-year-old vampire, they get rid of cursed objects and keep Charleston and the world safe from supernatural threats.
When zombies rise in Charleston cemeteries, dead men fall from the sky, and the whole city succumbs to the “grouch flu,” Cassidy, Teag, and Sorren suspect a vengeful dark witch who is gunning for Teag and planning to unleash an ancient horror. Cassidy, Teag, and Sorren—and all their supernatural allies—will need magic, cunning, and the help of a Viking demi-goddess to survive the battle with a malicious witch and an ancient Norse warlock to keep Charleston—and the whole East Coast—from becoming the prey of the Master of the Hunt.
Tangled
Web – Chapter One Excerpt
I’d never been a
fan of hunting, and I liked it even less when Teag Logan and I were the prey.
“They’re getting
closer,” I yelled, as the wind swept around us, and the sound of braying dogs
grew louder. Hoof beats thundered far too close, and I felt sure we’d be ridden
down at any second.
Teag didn’t
move. “They’re not real,” he replied, raising his head to the wind. In one
hand, he held a staff carved with protective runes and wrapped with spelled
rope. In the other, he gripped an iron rod. I could see the tension in the
twitch of a muscle in his jaw, and I knew Teag better than to think he’d take a
reckless chance. But as the pounding of horse hooves and the wild barking of
dogs closed in on us, my heart thudded like our days were numbered.
“They can’t do
anything if we stay inside the salt ring.” Teag knew I knew that. This wasn’t
our first rodeo…or our first spectral “hunt.” But this manifestation sounded
big and real; and the circle of salt that enclosed us seemed like flimsy
protection, although I knew how powerful it was in the spirit world.
I held my
athame—the handle of an old wooden spoon—in one hand, and in the other, I
grasped a smooth agate spindle whorl, a powerful protective charm. A shake of
the dog collar that wound around my left wrist, and a spectral dog appeared
beside me, the ghost of Bo, my old golden retriever. Bo must not have liked the
barking hounds, since he lowered his head, bared his teeth, and bristled.
“Here they
come,” Teag murmured.
On the horizon,
the shadows darkened, sweeping toward us in a wave with the gallop of dozens of
horses, eager hounds running around and between them. If they kept their
course, they were heading right for us.
I almost
expected the ground to shudder beneath us, but these shadow horses glided
across the grass. Even though I’m not a medium, I could pick up the disquieting
energy, which felt like a gathering storm.
A horn blew,
rallying the hunters. I thought about the old stories I’d heard of the Norse
gods leading an eternal, infernal hunt with red-eyed horses and demon dogs.
While I didn’t see a glint of hellfire in the eyes of these ghostly horses, I
had no desire to get a good look up close. The cloud loomed like black roiling
smoke, and sometimes the darkness took the shape of horses and other times of
dogs before vanishing into the inky mass.
The hunters bore
down on us, and the wind picked up, gusting hard. And when it howled past, it
swept away the ring of salt that protected us from those pounding hooves.
“Run!” I yelled.
But after a few steps, when I didn’t see Teag close beside me, I turned. He’s
taller than I am, with long legs, and he should have been able to outrun me.
Instead, to my horror, I saw Teag standing still, staring mesmerized into the
roiling darkness, as the ghostly horses headed straight at him.
“Teag!” I
focused my will, leveling my athame at the spectral hunters. A blast of cold
white force blazed from the tip, as Bo’s ghost sprang into action, planting
himself between Teag and the apparitions, barking furiously. The white force
shredded the darkness, scattering the black fog. I held on tight to the agate
whorl in my left hand, drawing on its protective power, and channeled
everything I had into the blast of light. A few seconds later, the sound of the
ghostly hunters was gone.
“Teag?” I’d
never seen him freeze like that, and as I stepped closer, Teag shook himself
like he was waking from a dream.
“Cassidy?” Teag
was disoriented, and I put a hand on his arm to prove I was real.
“They’re gone,”
I replied. “Are you okay?”
“Yeah, I think
so,” he answered. I had the feeling he wasn’t telling me everything, but
sometimes Teag holds back until he’s thought a problem through. I’d just have
to bide my time.
Teag looked back
toward where we had set the salt ring. “They say that Geoffrey Nicholson’s
horse threw him right over there,” Teag pointed to a spot near an old live oak
tree, “and he broke his neck. The horse stepped into a hole and busted its leg,
so it was put down, too.”
“That was in
1878,” I mused. “But from what we saw with the ghosts, Nicholson never stopped
hunting.”
“All of the men
in that fox hunt the day Nicholson was killed died within a year, under unusual
circumstances.” Teag scanned the horizon as if looking for ghostly hounds and
riders. A lock of straight, chocolate brown hair fell into his eyes, and he
pushed it away.
“Do you think
they still ride with him?” Part of me wondered whether their hunting dogs
crossed over with them, and I hoped that the unfortunate fox wasn’t doomed to a
perpetual reenactment.
“That’s what the
stories say, but I thought it might be a dramatic flourish—until what we saw.
Now, I’d say odds are pretty good.” Teag walked carefully around the old live
oak tree, and I scoured a nearby section of ground. We both looked for trampled
grass, hoof prints, anything that would suggest a physical—rather than
ghostly—reason for the sightings.
“There’s been
enough rain that anything out here should have left marks,” I replied. Plenty
of humidity, too—enough to frizz my strawberry-blonde hair, and pink up my very
pale Scots-Irish skin. “So I’m betting on ghosts. But the real question is, are
they repeaters, or sentient? And what’s juiced them up enough that people
aren’t just seeing them, they’re being chased?”
I’m Cassidy
Kincaide, owner of Trifles and Folly, an antique and curio shop in historic,
haunted Charleston, SC. Welcome to my life.
About the Author:
Gail Z. Martin writes urban fantasy, epic fantasy and steampunk for Solaris Books, Orbit Books, Falstaff Books, SOL Publishing and Darkwind Press. Urban fantasy series include Deadly Curiosities and the Night Vigil (Sons of Darkness). Epic fantasy series include Darkhurst, the Chronicles Of The Necromancer, the Fallen Kings Cycle, the Ascendant Kingdoms Saga, and the Assassins of Landria. Newest titles include Tangled Web, Vengeance, The Dark Road, and Assassin’s Honor. As Morgan Brice, she writes urban fantasy MM paranormal romance. Books include Witchbane and Badlands.
Website: http://www.GailZMartin.com
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