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Greetings from Minnesota!
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Blaze and I drove from out place to Minneapolis last week, to attend a huge gathering of the Cutter clan. My eldest brother turned seventy-five this year, as did his lovely wife. They’ve been married for twenty years. It was Blaze’s birthday this week as well.
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About 120 people showed up, family, neighbors, and friends. Not only that, my brother hired a Mariachi band who played for two hours. Most of the food was catered, but he and his wife still made some of it. Blaze and I showed up early to help set up, then talked with folks all day long.
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The last time we made the trek to MN was 2019. Most of the grandkids have grown up, interested in talking to the adults. There are a lot of artists in the group (no surprise) and they had questions for Blaze and I about being writers, being artists. It was amazing to be able to connect with them.
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After that, we went to a second birthday party for one of my friends who was turning 60. Stayed for a short while (as we were both pretty tired). All in all, a pretty perfect day.
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Since it’s the last week of the month, I’m going to tell you about one of my books. In honor of us being in MN, I figured I would tell y’all about a book that’s set here, in Minneapolis.
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Cassie is one of my favorite characters. (TBH, I love all of my characters.) Fair warning, Cassie is foul-mouthed and uses the word “Fuck” like a comma.
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The four-book series takes place in an alternative world which looks very much like this one. However, psychic powers are real. And trainable. And there’s a bit of an insistence that everyone be tested for powers. Just a touch of governmental overreach, as most psychics aren’t “property” of the military, though many are. Very few work in the private sector. And they’re heavily monitored.
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Cassie works at a sex toy shop in downtown Minneapolis. (The place doesn’t exist anymore, but it did, and on one of the trips Blaze and I made to Mpls I was able to show it to him.) She lives in an apartment complex that’s in walking distance (and again, that place did exist at one point but it’s gone now). The names were changed, but the restaurants that she mentions were all real. Most of the places that are described in the book existed at some point.
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Cassie is also a gold-star lesbian, which means she’s never slept with a man. (And yes, that technically makes her a virgin, which Loki tries to exploit in one of the other novels in the series.)
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Officially, these books are classified as urban fantasy, partly because the first scene in the prologue is from the POV of Odin. Loki is a driving force in these books. And he’s a trickster and an asshole.
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The other reason that these books are urban fantasy is because Minneapolis is very much a character in these novels. They couldn’t be set in any other city. They are my homage to the city of my youth, to the lakes and the parkways, to the busses and the weather.
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These books aren’t cozy. They’re sort of dark. There are graphic killings and twisted plots. They’re an amalgamation of fantasy, mystery, and science fiction (because that’s what psychic is traditionally classified under).
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Some of the ideas for the initial novel came to me back in 1985. I had a scene that I wrote back then. No idea what it was or where it was going. Just this scene that kept tugging at me. And originally, Hunter was more science fictiony. Eventually, everything came together.
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I try to always practice something in terms of craft with every novel I write. With the Cassie novels, I was practicing Voice. Not just with the main character, though, with all of them. Everyone who has a scene in their POV has a lot of Voice.
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So go and pick up a copy today! ALSO, there’s a new feature on the store. Some of the novels now have a “Read a Sample” button. As I have time and inclination, all of the book ones will get that same button.
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And that's all for today.
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June is here! And with that, there's a new book on sale in the Knotted Road Press store.
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For the month of June, The Long Run Omnibus is on sale for merely $9.99! That means four novels (yes, FOUR novels) for the cost of two. What a bargain!
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In addition, this collection is only available on the Knotted Road Press store. (Though if you go to see Leah at a live sales event, she will sell you the paper version, also for a bargain, at just $40. That's $10 a book, instead of $15 for each.)
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Judit—a hard-headed captain of a starship who may swear too much in Hungarian—gets hired by a powerful alien to break the stranglehold that the Universal Trading Cartel has on, well, everyone in the galaxy.
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Follow Judit and her quirky alien crew as they con their way across planets and through star systems, as well as all the corporate machinations.
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This omnibus contains all four books in this completed series!
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They say history doesn't repeat itself, but it will frequently rhyme.
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However, what about crimes that get repeated? How are they similar to the original? How are they different? And why?
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The devil is in the details, after all.
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Come see what the syndicate members of MCM have done with crimes that riff off of events from the past.
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MCM. So Criminal, It's Good.
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