Sunday, March 9, 2014

An Abundance of Dreamcatcher!

So as we’re between the release of New Roads To Hell and the next Shadow Legion book, The Shadow Legion Casebook: The Shape Of Fears To Come, and something unusual has come to light.

Namely, that people want to read more about Maybelle Tremens, the Dreamcatcher.

I honestly did not expect Maybelle to be a breakout star.  New Roads was primarily Nightbreaker and Ferryman’s story.  I did manage to put in some time to sketch out Black Talon’s background, but Maybelle?  Outside of a conversation, not a lot was paid to Dreamcatcher or the Tremens family.  Add into the fact that ‘A Prayer For The Toy God,' the Dreamcatcher story for the Casebook took the longest to write (there’s literally four story fragments representing four false starts, including a baseball-themed tale I’m tempted to revisit), and you’d think our magic wielding maven would be the character least likely to generate interest.

But first Joshua Reynolds, the creator of Charles St. Cyprian and Ebe Gallowglass and author of their first full length adventure The Whitechapel Demon, requested that I provided a story for the anthology of occult detectives, A Grimoire Of Eldritch Inquests.  This resulted in my coming up with a little mystery tale involving greed, murder and the undead that, for some frustrating reason, is untitled.  Once a title becomes apparent, I promise I will reveal it.

At the same time, the great Mark Bousquet and I decided to produce Strange And Cozy.  This is an anthology of cozy mysteries (think of Agatha Christie) written in different pulp styles.  The original idea was for me to contribute a Don Cuevo story, but it became apparent that a Dreamcatcher story would be a better fit.  This resulted in me beginning ‘A Bullet For The Bride,’ where Maybelle and her paramore, Colin ‘Black Talon’ Palmersdale travel to the glamorous city of San Cristobal for a wedding....and end up having to solve a locked room mystery!  I’m working on that right now, and it should be available in the fall.

(And if you’re a writer who wants to contribute to our anthology, you can find more information here.)

So those of you who liked New Roads To Hell and can’t wait to read more Shadow Legion should feel secure--there’ll be more Dreamcatcher stories than you can shake a magic wand at soon enough!

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