Inside Jacket

(View entire post here)

The world of Deadtown is haunted by demons. They come out at night: shrieking, howling, and tormenting the vulnerable. Vicky Vaughn, Boston's only professional demon slayer, is there to send your demons back into the ether–if you can afford her fee.

In Deadtown there are two kinds of demons: those that are conjured and those that have independent existence. Personal demons, the ones Vicky kills for her clients, are conjured demons. They don't exist until someone summons them and gives them form. The summoning can happen deliberately–as when a sorcerer conjures Harpies (revenge demons) and sends them to attack an enemy-or it can happen unconsciously. Without intending to, people can conjure their own demons.

How does that work? When you don't face a fear, worry, or regret, the issue tends to grow. It visits you as you lie in bed at night, creeping into your thoughts and maybe–if you manage to sleep–invading your dreams. The bigger the problem grows, the more demons it conjures. Personal demons gobble up fear, guilt, and other negative emotions like candy.

But Vicky's the demon expert, so I'll let her explain. In this snippet from Deadtown, Vicky is being questioned by two homicide detectives, Stephanie Hagopian and Daniel Costello. One of Vicky's clients is dead, and they want to know whether he could have been murdered by demons:

Hagopian jumped. Then she nodded and opened a notebook. She cleared her throat twice. "The death was . . . well, it wasn't normal," she said. "We know from documents found at the scene that you were there last night in your, ah, professional capacity. We'd like your opinion on whether Funderburk died as the result of a demon attack."

I shook my head. "I exterminated the whole pod. Besides, demons don't kill. They torment. That's how they feed. If the victim dies, the party's over."

"What do you mean?"

"Demons are conjured entities. They don't exist until someone invokes them. That someone can be a sorcerer out to hurt someone-that's where Harpies come from-or it can be the victim himself." Hagopian flinched, and I added, "Or herself."

"People conjure demons against themselves?" She raised a plucked-half-to-death eyebrow.

"Not on purpose. But strong feelings of guilt or shame or fear can bring demons swarming to a victim like honeybees to a rose garden. Eidolons are personal demons that feed on guilt. Drudes feed on fear. They're pretty similar, except Eidolons attack while you're lying awake at night and Drudes invade your dreams."

Hagopian shuddered, and I got the feeling she'd had a personal encounter with a demon or two. Too bad that now wasn't the time to make my sales pitch. Not that she'd be buying, seeing as how my last client turned up dead. I remembered his happy, off-key humming after the extermination. Poor old George.

"Harpies," I continued, "are revenge demons. Eidolons and Drudes can take many forms, but Harpies always look the same: They've got vulture bodies and Medusa heads, with snakes for hair and a beak for a mouth. They smell like garbage that's baked in the sun for a week. Their screeching"-I tried to find a way to describe the brain-shredding noise Harpies made, but there were no words for it-"well, their screeching alone can drive a person insane."

Both detectives were watching me openmouthed, like kids listening to a scary campfire story they didn't want to hear. Too bad. They'd dragged me here; they deserved all the juicy details. "Harpies attack from the outside. You're lying in bed, and suddenly you can't move. These hideous things-worse than any nightmare-fly through the wall and land on you, tearing into you with their talons. Then they begin to feed. It feels like they're ripping out your vital organs. The agony lasts all night. The next morning, there's no physical damage. But you can count on them returning night after night after night."

"What about the other kinds, the"-Hagopian consulted her notebook-"the Eidolons and the Drudes?" Her voice had diminished to a croak. Costello shot her a questioning look, but her eyes were fixed on me.

"Eidolons attack from the inside," I answered, "like you've got some huge, venomous parasite gnawing on your bones. Guilt brought to life. Some victims can see their Eidolons; others just feel unbearable agony. Drudes are unpredictable, like dreams, and they're the source of most nightmares. If you're plagued by horrible dreams, swarming with everything you fear, you've got a Drude infestation." I glanced at Detective Hagopian, who'd closed her eyes and was breathing shallowly through her mouth. Yep. Drude victim for sure. I turned back to Costello. "Demon attacks are terrifying and painful. Hell on earth. But they're not fatal. When a victim dies, that person's demons cease to exist. That's why demons don't kill."

But some demons do kill, as Vicky knows all too well. Those are the second kind of demons, the ones that exist independently. The worst of these are Hellions, demons that feed not from personal emotions but from widespread suffering and destruction. The plague that created Boston's zombies attracted a legion of Hellions to the city, and a magical shield was erected to keep them out. But somehow the shield has been breached and a Hellion now threatens the city. And not just any Hellion–this is Difethwr, the Destroyer, and Vicky has a personal history with the thing.

To see Vicky in action as she rids a client of nightmare-causing Drudes, read Chapter 1 of Deadtown.

(View entire post here)

Deadtown features Victory Vaughn, a Welsh Cerddorion shapeshifter who kills other people's demons for a living. Vicky specializes in personal demons, the kinds that torment individuals when they're all alone with their deepest, darkest fears and secrets.

The idea that sparked Deadtown came from reading an agent's blog. The agent was talking about clichés and meaningless phrases that crept into query letters; as an example, she mentioned a character who "wrestles with his own personal demons" and, getting literal-minded for a moment, she wondered who else could possibly wrestle with your personal demons besides you. I got literal-minded, too, and started to imagine a character who'd do exactly that. (And wouldn't it be fantastic if you really could hire someone to exterminate the fears that haunt your dreams or the pangs of guilt and regret that gnaw at your guts at two o'clock in the morning?) 

So I had an idea. But I didn't yet have a character who'd bring that idea to life. I set to work developing one.

It's almost impossible to say where characters come from. When I write, I don't piece them together like Frankenstein–a physical trait here, a personality quirk or bit of backstory there–and then hope they'll come to life. Instead, it feels more like the character already exists somewhere in my subconscious, waiting to step forward. But that doesn't make things easy for me, because the character won't venture out of the shadows until I've got a pretty decent understanding of who that character is. For me, creating a character is more a process of discovery than creation.

With Vicky, the first thing I knew about her was that her name was Victory. Early on, the same words that would come to Vicky's father in a prophetic dream popped into my own mind: "A girl child shall be born unto you, and her name shall be Victory." I liked that; Victory seems like a good name for a demon slayer. And the way her name was given to her father offered me another clue: I liked the idea that Vicky came from a race of demon slayers. I wanted her beef with demons to go way back.

So the next step in getting to know my character was to learn about her family history. I researched demons and demon fighters from several different mythologies, but I kept coming back to medieval Europe. I'd done a PhD in medieval literature and taught as a medievalist for several years, so I already knew a lot about the mythology of that place and time. I started thinking about myths and legends that might fit Vicky's background.

When I hit upon the Mabinogion, a collection of Welsh stories written down during the 12th and 13th centuries, something clicked. One of my favorite stories from that collection is the legend of Ceridwen and Gwion Bach, which includes a shapeshifting contest. (You can read a 19th-century translation of the story here.) I thought, "This is where Vicky comes from!" and a lot of things fell into place. Vicky is one of the Cerddorion (ker-THOR-yon), which means "sons of Ceridwen." Taking my cues from the Welsh legend, I developed the Cerddorion as a race of shapeshifters that are different from weres. They can shift at will into any kind of creature (or sometimes strong emotion can force a shift), up to three times per lunar cycle. Although both sexes fight demons, only females can change their shape (Ceridwen had natural shifting ability but the boy Gwion Bach stole it from her); this ability appears at puberty and is lost if the shapeshifter gives birth to a child. The seeds for this limitation are in the legend, but it also causes a conflict for Vicky that will strengthen as the series progresses.

At this point, Vicky was starting to come into focus a bit more. I started filling out a character sheet so I could keep track of the details that were emerging: age, eye color, hair color, height and build, stuff like that. But a character sheet is static, just a list of qualities. It's kind of like reading a personal ad–you need to go on a date before you get any sense of what the person is really like. Same thing with characters; you get to them by seeing them in action.

To put Vicky into action, I began writing some scenes. I didn't know whether any of these scenes would make their way into the novel (most didn't), but they let me get to know her better. For example, I initially expected Vicky to have a dark, almost grim personality, but as I wrote her voice took over and showed me what she was like. When Vicky explained her job to someone by saying, "I'm kind of like a therapist, but instead of a couch I use a flaming sword," I realized that she had more of a sense of humor than I'd let her show so far. And why not? When you routinely face the creatures that give other people nightmares, a sense of humor can keep you sane. With more writing, Vicky's voice grew stronger, her personality more her own.

Speaking of her flaming sword, the Sword of Saint Michael, Vicky uses that to fight Hellions. Personal demons aren't the only demons who haunt Boston in Deadtown, and Hellions are every bit as big, bad, destructive, and just plain nasty as their name implies.

My next post will be all about Deadtown's demons, from the personal demons who feed on human emotion to the Hellions who revel in large-scale destruction.

(View entire post here)

Deadtown, the first book in my new urban fantasy series, hit the shelves a couple of weeks ago. The series features Vicky Vaughn, a shapeshifter of the Welsh Cerddorion race who exterminates other people's personal demons for a living. Because it's a brand-new series, I thought I'd start here by introducing Vicky's world.

Three years ago Boston's paranormals were just beginning to come forward and lobby for human acceptance, led by activist werewolf lawyer Alexander Kane. When a plague tore through downtown Boston, infecting and killing every human in its path, the paranormal community stepped in to help. Paranormals were immune to the virus, so they gathered up the dead and enforced the quarantine zone. But then the plague victims began to rise.

Immediately, the walls that had been erected to keep curious humans out of the quarantine zone became barriers to keep the zombies in. Understandable, right? The virus had already mutated into something harmless, but no one knew that at the time. The plague victims might still be contagious. And they were different, frighteningly so. (Three days of decaying will do that to a person.) The newly risen zombies could think and talk, but they had spongy, greenish-gray skin and the whites of their eyes glowed blood red. They couldn't tolerate sunlight. Something happened to their muscles between death and reanimation that made them incredibly strong. And they were subject to seemingly insatiable hunger–a hunger that intensified to a frenzy whenever a zombie caught a whiff of human blood. The quarantine zone became a ghetto, a place where all paranormals were required by law to live. Deadtown.

In building my fantasy world, I spent a lot of time thinking about how society would react to the sudden and indisputable emergence of paranormal beings in their midst. Kane's activist group was one thing–it could easily be dismissed as a bunch of crackpots. (Can you imagine? "Hi, I'm a werewolf. No, really. Prove it? Believe me, you wouldn't want to be around if I did." I mean, how fast would you end that conversation?) But the rising of the zombies couldn't be ignored. Boston had to adjust–and adjust fast.

When the plague victims rose from the dead, it seemed to me that people's first reaction would be relief, even jubilation. A large-scale tragedy had been reversed, friends and loved ones snatched back from the grave. But the joy would be tempered by caution. Surely this repulsive creature couldn't really be Mom or Dad or that nice lady from next door or the kids' soccer coach. Could a human end up looking like a zombie if the newly risen got too close? And were those really werewolves and vampires and other … monsters … working in the quarantine zone? And so caution turned to fear. And from fear arose the desire to control.

At the time the events of Deadtown take place, the former quarantine zone is surrounded by electrified fencing. There are checkpoints into human-controlled Boston and into Deadtown itself; the block in between is a no-man's-land called the New Combat Zone, lined with rough bars where adventure-seeking humans mingle with the monsters. All paranormals are required to carry identification cards, and zombies can't leave Deadtown unless they're accompanied by someone who has a permit to take them out. Humans have created Deadtown in an attempt to keep the monsters at bay. And Kane's focus has switched from getting humans to acknowledge the monsters to fighting for paranormal rights.

People have always had a tendency to contain what they fear and label it as "Other." Deadtown takes you behind the wall and into the world of those Others.

Next time, I'll tell you more about Deadtown's demon-slaying resident, Vicky Vaughn: who she is, the history of her race, and why she's holding that awesome flaming sword on Deadtown's cover.

(View entire post here)

Nancy Holzner is one of our guest bloggers during the week of January 11th. If you have any questions for Nancy Holzner, add a comment to any of her posts. Here is some more information about Deadtown:

First in a brand new urban fantasy series that's "fresh and funny, with a great new take on zombies" (Karen Chance) and "full of dangerous magic and populated with characters so realistic, they almost jump off the page" (Ilona Andrews).

If you were undead, you'd be home by now…

They call it Deadtown: the city's quarantined section for its inhuman and undead residents. Most humans stay far from its borders-but Victory Vaughn, Boston's only professional demon slayer, isn't exactly human.

View our feature on Nancy Holzner's Deadtown. 

About Nancy Holzner

Nancy Holzner grew up in western Massachusetts with her nose stuck in a book. This meant that she tended to walk into things, wore glasses before she was out of elementary school, and forced her parents to institute a "no reading at the dinner table" rule. It was probably inevitable that she majored in English in college and then, because there were still a lot of books she wanted to read, continued her studies long enough to earn a masters degree and a Ph.D.

She began her career as a medievalist, then jumped off the tenure track to try some other things. Besides teaching English and philosophy, she's worked as a technical writer, freelance editor and instructional designer, college admissions counselor, and corporate trainer.

Nancy lives in upstate New York with her husband Steve, where they both work from home without getting on each others nerves. She enjoys visiting local wineries and listening obsessively to opera. There are still a lot of books she wants to read.

Deadtown