Guest Post: How to Characterize Christ in a Novel by Cotton E. Davis
When I presumed to make Yeshua bar Yosef (Christ) a character in my recently released time-travel novel TimeWarp, Inc., I had to make numerous decisions regarding how to portray him. The physical part wasn’t as difficult as one might imagine. Though the New Testament leaves us with no physical description of the man, Isaiah 53:2 described the coming Messiah as rather ordinary looking. No Max von Sydows or Jeffrey Hunters here. I set aside the classical image of a blond-haired, blue-eyed European-looking gent for a swarthier dark-brown or black-haired fellow more in keeping with the Jews who inhabited Lower Galilee at the time. Short-cropped hair and beards were the style among Jewish men then, so goodby to the luxuriant locks seen in so many paintings and movies. One more fact: most skulls unearthed from the first-century holy land were rounder than the traditional long-faced image. Decidedly so. I also made my character well-formed. Physically powerful, even. This was not the namby- pamby weakling depicted in Renaissance art. Jesus was in the building trade. That’s hard work, especially back then. Mathew 13:55 describes Jesus as the son of a tekton, while the Gospel Mark 6:3 calls Christ himself a tekton, the classical Greek term meaning, among other things, a builder or artisan. That’s a skilled jack-of-all-trades, rather than the translated “carpenter” we’re accustomed to reading and hearing about. In short, a tekton worked with wood, stone, even metals. And, since the Romanized capital of Galilee, Sepphoris, lay only a few miles from Jesus’ village of Nazareth, he and his father Joseph must have traveled there for the kind of gainful employment a village of four hundred people could not provide. Greco-Roman cities were constructed largely of stone–black basalt from Capernaum in this case. By necessity, Jeshua bar Yosef undoubtedly possessed masonry skills. Strength too. Ever try to lift a stone block? Maybe I should say something about TimeWarp, Inc. It is basically the story of an agnostic ex-soldier from the 21st century who travels back in time, where he meets and becomes Christ’s best friend during the latter part of the “lost years” between Jesus’ birth and ministry. The Jeshua bar Yosef the reader meets is a year or so from going out into the world to proselytize. He is a young man, not yet thirty. Reading between the lines of the Gospels, it’s easy to picture a Jesus who not only had his share of friends but also possessed a keen mind and sense of humor…which is exactly how I portrayed him. What else do we know about Christ? Here again, we must look between the scriptural lines. We’ve read about his knowledge of the Torah in Luke, but what else can we be sure of? (One) He spoke both Aramaic and Hebrew, as was common among Jews in Roman-occupied Palestine. (Two) He probably also spoke Latin and possibly Greek. Plying his trade in Sepphoris, Jesus would almost certainly have had to converse in the Roman tongue, and don’t forget Greek was the trade language of the region, plus Alexander the Great conquered the area about 200 years before Jesus was born. Also, most educated Romans were bilingual, speaking Greek fluently. Moreover the Gospels were originally written in Greek. (3) Christ had a keen understanding of human nature. If the Gospels tell us anything, they tell us that. (4) Jesus was almost Lincolnesque in his ability to tell stories or, in this case, parables: simple, easy-to-remember, image-filled allegories. But, unlike our 16th President’s tales, which were usually communicated for the sake of humor, Jesus’ stories were meant to convey a subtle message central to the man’s teachings. If you want a good laugh, check out the practice parable the pre-ministry Jesus comes up with in Chapter Fifty-One. That leaves one glaring question about my character. Was he divine? That is left pretty much up to the reader. TimeWarp, Inc. is not a biblical supplement. It is a story, a novel about time travel, after all. Jesus, though painstakingly researched, is one of many characters, some from the 21st century, others from the time of Herod Antipas. I will say, however, that the question of Jesus’ divinity is a running argument among the time travelers–particularly my agnostic hero and his Christian girlfriend–throughout the book. ————————————————————— About the Book When historian Gwen Hoffman first meets time traveler Mike Garvin, an ex-Special Forces weapons sergeant back from ancient Gaul where he was embedded as a centurion in Julius Caesar’s elite 10th Legion, she is more than a little put off. Scarred and dangerous-looking, the man appears more thug than time traveler. Yet he is the person TimeWarp, Inc. is sending back in time to protect Jeshua bar Yosef (Christ) from twenty-first century assassins; the man Gwen was assigned to prepare for life in first-century Galilee. Gwen, of course, has no idea she and Garvin will become lovers. Nor does she realize she herself will end up in Roman Palestine, where she will not only meet Jesus but face danger alongside Mike in the adventure of a lifetime… You can find out more about the author and the book here.
Guest Post: “Freedom to Name” by Max Gladstone (Three Parts Dead)
Somewhere in Thailand, a mind-controlled ant climbs a tree. She moves in jerks and starts, her body no longer her own. Alone, she staggers to the underside of a leaf, and bites the thick central stem. Her jaw locks. Her chitin bulges and bursts. A long gray tendril rises from within, unfurls to three times her length, and pops to release a cloud of spores. Away on the breeze the spores float, to possess any other ants unlucky enough to remain within the blast radius. The fungus is called Ophiocordyceps camponoti-balzani. The fungus infects an ant, takes over the victim’s brain, forces it to move to a high place near other ants–a place where spores will spread–and explodes. That’s real. If you work for a corporation or a non-profit, you’re part of a functionally immortal entity whose life is governed by laws more theological than biological—a being that draws strength from desire, faith, and sacrifice. When corporations emerged in the High Middle Ages, jurists compared them to angels: immortal, immaterial, mighty. And every angel is terrifying. That’s real, too. You read these words on a screen lit by lightning, which we harnessed either by burning hundred-million-year-old plants and plankton (and a few dinosaurs), by wrestling rivers like Achilles, by binding the wind or the shifting tide or sunlight or subterranean fire. Building your screen required labors that would make Hercules blanch. How can we tell stories about that kind of world? A world that’s not straightforward, a world with diversities of wonder, justice, injustice, horror, majesty, and sheer scale to beggar the wildest opium dreams? We can tell some stories by zooming in. The earth seems flat to most human beings, most of the time. Newtonian physics works fine for objects about the size of people, moving at people speeds. A character who calls her former lover to console him after his father’s death doesn’t need to think about cellular towers, satellites, digital audio, or call routing, let alone the Chinese mine that produced the rare earths used to make the phone (and the people who worked there). By focusing on dramatic structures of everyday life and emotional politics that haven’t changed much since Murasaki wrote Genji, a storyteller can avoid much of reality’s weirdness. Or the teller can embrace the strange. Break open the common surface of our lives and expose the machinery beneath. Show characters who engage with the mad mess of their setting, who are elevated by it or ground to dust or both. Pull out elements of our daily weird, hold them to the light, and watch them spark. Some people accuse fantastic literature–science fiction, fantasy, horror, and all their permutations–of escapism. And sure, some of us come to genre tales for the rich fantasy lives, for the grand open vistas and the capital-E Evils which Must Be Stopped. But I think the richness of the genre lies in confrontationalism, not escapism: its ability to address the fundamental strangeness of the natural world, and the world we’ve built, and the world being built around us. The freedom to tell stories out of this world can offer the freedom to name more precisely the world where we live. And that world is wild, and needs naming. ——————————————————- About the Author: MAX GLADSTONE went to Yale, where he wrote a short story that became a finalist in the Writers of the Future competition. He lives in Boston, Massachusetts. About the Book: A god has died, and it’s up to Tara, first-year associate in the international necromantic firm of Kelethres, Albrecht, and Ao, to bring Him back to life before His city falls apart. Her client is Kos, recently deceased fire god of the city of Alt Coulumb. Without Him, the metropolis’s steam generators will shut down, its trains will cease running, and its four million citizens will riot. Tara’s job: resurrect Kos before chaos sets in. Her only help: Abelard, a chain-smoking priest of the dead god, who’s having an understandable crisis of faith. When Tara and Abelard discover that Kos was murdered, they have to make a case in Alt Coulumb’s courts—and their quest for the truth endangers their partnership, their lives, and Alt Coulumb’s slim hope of survival.
Guest Post: “The Palest of Copies: History, Culture, Empire, and Fiction” by Daniel A. Rabuzzi (The Indigo Pheasant)
(Details about The Indigo Pheasant, Mr. Rabuzzi, and his blog tour can be found below the post. Go buy the book!) Historians of medieval Europe would be surprised at the pallid, static and simplistic depictions of their subject in the work of many modern fantasy writers. In the past fifty years, medievalists have overturned Western Renaissance and Enlightenment assertions that the “middle time” was an opaque, undifferentiated hiatus endured between the glittering peaks of Rome and Modernity. Equipped with digital tools, platoons of medievalists today are able to mine, compile, sort, and index more data about medieval people and places than any prior generation.[i] Advances in aerial archaeology surveys, underwater excavations, and isotope analysis — to name but three– have dramatically expanded our knowledge of daily life (everything from how bricks were made to how bread was baked), migration and settlement patterns, trade routes, funerary practices, and much more.[ii] A willingness to use methods from anthropology, geographical studies, and other social sciences — epitomized by the widely influential Annales school in France, the Cambridge Group for the History of Population & Social Structure in the U.K., and the Quaderni storici in Italy — has buttressed our new interpretations of the era.[iii] Above all, medieval studies has — to great advantage — wedded its traditional strengths in manuscript analysis and paleography with modern literary critical approaches and semiotics, framing our questions in entirely new ways and forming new understandings from materials previously neglected or ignored.[iv] I hope we might see more variety, more dynamism and more nuance in the pseudo-medieval settings adopted by many fantasy authors. Transposing modern analogues, or what we perceive as similarities, won’t work. We need to rasp, file, chisel and mallet ourselves back to another reality, before we can use it for our modern fabulistic purposes. We must translate ourselves, in the word’s literal Latin sense of carrying over, of removing from one place to another. And then the real work begins. Even medieval concepts we think we know, after having laboriously scrubbed off the verdigris, will betray us because the context is gone. For instance, where is a modern fantasy novel based on Saint Maurice, one of the most widely venerated in the European Middle Ages, bearer of the holy “Spear of Destiny,” and the patron saint of the Holy Roman Empire? He is routinely depicted as an African in full knight’s armor — the oldest image we have of St. Maurice is an imposing 13th-century statue in the Cathedral of Magdeburg, right beside the tomb of Emperor Otto I. He is portrayed elsewhere conversing as an equal with the Pope. Bridging the centuries and the Middle Passage (and surviving Katrina), there is a St. Maurice Church in the Ninth Ward of New Orleans. I want fantastical epics that take as their point of departure the life of the Jewish community documented by the Geniza repository in Cairo, or of Muslim merchants in Aleppo and Damascus establishing a foundation or school via waqf deeds.[v] I seek spec fic based on the adventures of Malian mathematicians and astronomers, and on the exploits of sastra of jyotisa practitioners in India.[vi] How about using as a setting the embassy King Harsa of Kanauj in India sent to the T’ang emperor T’ai Tsung or the mission King Pulakesin II of Badami dispatched to the Sassanian emperor Khusru II?[vii] Imagine riding with the spec fic counterpart of the great Muslim admiral Zheng He on his seven epic voyages for the Chinese emperor in the early 15th century, reaching as far as East Africa — focusing on the common sailors. Delve into fictional versions of Sundiata’s empire, or the adventures of Oranyan, a prince of Ile-Ife, who followed a serpent as was foretold and thereby founded the Yoruba Empire. Or explore Cambay in Gujarat and Calicut on the Malabar, and Aden, which 10th-century traveler al-Muqaddasi described as “the anteroom of China, entrepot of Yemen, treasury of the West, and mother lode of trade wares.” Why indeed limit ourselves to medieval Europe (and a truncated Europe at that) when crafting the backdrops for fabulistic literature? Feminist perspectives, postcolonialist approaches, and frameworks established by scholars from within the African Diaspora have each revolutionized literary, historical and cultural studies in the United States. [viii] Insights gained from the study of modern history are helping us identify the thorns in the romance of the rose.[ix] For instance, Sharon Kinoshita observes that “many of the best-known works of medieval French literature take place on or beyond the borders of ‘France’ or even the French-speaking world,” and argues that the origins of vernacular French writing is “inextricably linked to historical situations of contact between French-speaking nobles and peoples they perceived as their linguistic, religious and cultural others.”[x] Geraldine Heng makes a similar point: “Allowing fantasies of race and nation to surface with remarkable freedom, and to flex themselves with astonishing ease and mobility, medieval romance becomes a medium that conduces with exceptional facility to the creation of races, and the production of a prioritizing discourse of essential differences among peoples in the Middle Ages.”[xi] From essentializing the Other to erasing the Other altogether is all too often a small step in the medieval European tradition, and in the later scholarship about the Middle Ages. Erasure is sometimes a part of creating the canon upon which — unknowingly or not — the modern fantasy genre rests. (I am reminded of how medieval scribes would use pumice stones “ad radenda pergamena,” i.e., “for scraping parchment.”) Maria Rosa Menocal gives a classic example when she notes that the root word for the quintessential medieval figure of the troubadour may be Arabic, not Latin, and that until recently the Arabic possibility was mostly ignored or obscured.[xii] Ananya Jahanara Kabir discusses how nostalgia can similarly erase and reorder the past to justify current power dynamics, using as her example 19th-century Britons building a history that showed medieval England inheriting leadership from Rome and in turn bequeathing the right to
Guest Post: “An Interview w/ Joseph de Alverado” by Jay Hartlove
JAY HARTLOVE: Hello, I am Jay Hartlove, author of The Chosen, a supernatural thriller published by Damnation Books and winner of Best Thriller by the Independent eBook Awards 2012. Today I have here in the studio a special guest from The Chosen. I would like to welcome to the show, Joseph de Alvarado. Welcome Mr. de Alvarado. Thank you for joining us. JOSEPH DE ALVERADO: It’s de Alverado, with an ‘e.’ JAY: Pardon me? Oh, sorry. Yes, I see here, it is an ‘e.’ My mistake. JOSEPH: Names matter. They have meanings. JAY: Okay. I believe you adopted this name from Silas Alverado, the man who brought you into this plane of existence. Is that right? JOSEPH: Yes. His name means, ‘Bringer of the Truth’. JAY: Interesting. Now, I know you are a very private person so I appreciate your agreeing to chat today. JOSEPH: You’re welcome. If by private you mean I don’t seek publicity, then you’re right. I rather think of myself as too busy for a lot of conversation. JAY: Too busy with your work, yes? Are you still the captain of the Purgatory? JOSEPH: Yes, among other things. JAY: You were an executive assistant to Silas Alverado. JOSEPH: I still am his Executive Officer. JAY: Didn’t that job end rather abruptly when he went missing? JOSEPH: No, in fact my responsibilities grew upon his departure. I am continuing his research work, and I am still searching for him. JAY: Do you mean you’re searching for a way to bring him back? JOSEPH: Yes. I am a reflection of the Opener of the Ways. If anyone can find a way, it should be me. JAY: You and I have chatted about this previously, but let me ask you a few questions about that for our listeners. As I understand it, you are an archangel of Ptah given physical form on Earth by Mr. Alverado. So how does that work? Magic doesn’t really function here on Earth, so how can you manifest your abilities as a supernatural being? JOSEPH: It’s not that magic doesn’t work here, it just needs to be converted. What you think of as magic breaks the laws of physics that are part of this plane, getting something for nothing, which you cannot do. To create the desired effect, you have to know how to use the laws of physics. JAY: So you had to learn quantum physics to perform your magic? JOSEPH: No, the synthesis comes naturally to me. I come from a plane where physical laws are much more malleable. I already know what the effect looks like. A human magician needs to learn the physical laws and then how to bend them to his will. My Master spent his life learning both the scientific and the arcane, because they have to be worked together to create change in this world. This is why most human magicians can’t accomplish any physical result. They have only learned the arcane techniques and not how to use them together with Physics. JAY: I imagine modern physicists would love to learn the secrets that, as you say, come naturally to you. JOSEPH: Well, that’s what My Master was attempting back in 2001. The Tablets of Aeth allow humans to understand the true nature of your physical laws, which allows humans to see how they can be molded to your will. They are literally the keys to your universe. Without these keys, I could not explain what I do to a human physicist in terms that would allow you to duplicate what I do. I don’t know how to show these secrets to you. No creature in history has been able to do so, except one. JAY: That would be the Demon Prince of Liars. JOSEPH: Correct. He alone had the audacity and the cunning to reduce these godly secrets to a form that humans can grasp. Of course, he only presented these images as part of his ruse to destroy Pharaoh. JAY: That was in the story of Exodus? JOSEPH: Yes. JAY: Were you there when that happened? JOSEPH: No. I was indisposed during that time. JAY: Were you in fact in prison? JOSEPH: Yes, I had been falsely convicted by my fellow angels of using names that can only be used by evil ones. JAY: You mean demons? JOSEPH: Yes. JAY: I believe Sanantha Mauwad and Charles Redmond thought you were a demon back in 2001. JOSEPH: They too were mistaken. JAY: Now Doctor Mauwad and Mr. Redmond believe in Voodoo, so how did you fit into their beliefs? JOSEPH: They worship my pantheon without realizing it. The gods of ancient Egypt were adopted by the peoples of West Africa and given new names when Egypt was conquered by the Romans. When those peoples were kidnapped and forced into slavery in the Americas, the Egyptian religion was blended with the Christian dogma of the slave masters to become Voodoo. The gods they worship are the gods of Egypt, just with different names. Doctor Mauwad identified that in her religion, I am a manifestation of Guede L’Orage. JAY: That’s very interesting how history and religion play hand in hand. I guess that means the Haitians were keeping your gods alive into the modern era. JOSEPH: Indeed. I found Haiti a very welcoming place. JAY: Let’s get back to your personal history. Some 3200 years ago you were unjustly cast out as a demon, then Mr. Alverado figured out you are in fact an angel, and set you free here on Earth. I guess you owe him a lot. JOSEPH: Nothing less than my eternal loyalty. JAY: Mr. Alverado was there, though, correct, during Exodus? JOSEPH: Yes, his earlier incarnation was given the position of High Priest
Guest Post and Giveaway: “Doing the Research” by CJ Bolyne (Blog Tour)
Hi everyone! It is really great to see you all on Day 5 of my virtual book blog tour. I truly appreciate your support! A huge thank you goes to Shaun for hosting me today! I am CJ Bolyne, a first time author. I have wanted to write for a very long time, but like I am sure many other first time authors felt, I was always afraid about what others would think of my writing. Finally, four years ago, I started my first book and thought that, if nothing else, at least I did this for myself! I was born in Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada. After a few years, my family moved about an hour south of Winnipeg, to a little town called Sarto, Manitoba. Yep, one blink, and you miss it. The remainder of my childhood was spent in the country. Yes I am a country girl at heart. I must admit, I did not read a lot as a child. I read only if I had too and that was usually for school purposes. How I hated the boring books in school! When I was much younger, I felt that my idea of the type of stories I wanted to write were not considered mainstream. When I expressed them to close friends, my ideas were considered too weird. Some said that I had a demented mind. (teehee – what author doesn’t, right?) I laughed about that. I knew that I did not always think the same as many around me. So, okay, my ideas were not considered popular. However, I’m happy to see that in the last decade, the fantasy, SciFi, etc. genres have made a real impact and I am so happy that there are many out there that thought the way I did! This, in part, has inspired me to give it a shot. So many books have influenced me, such as, Cradle and All by James Patterson, City of Bones, part of Cassandra Clare’s The Mortal Instruments series, Dracula by Anne Rice, The Twilight Series by Stephanie Meyer, and of course, the Harry Potter series by JK Rowling. Yes, I am a Harry Potter fan! However, of them all, James Patterson has to be my favourite author. I have always admired his imagination and his ability to write the books he wanted to write. Although, I also admire JK Rowling. In fact, it was after I saw a biography on JK Rowling that I really pushed myself to give writing a real attempt. The book I am reading now is The Magician’s Apprentice by Trudi Canavan. When I write, I write as though I am telling a story aloud, as I hear it in my head. My first serious attempt at writing started four years ago. That is when I started writing Trinity. Due to some personal obligations however, I had to take a break from writing and it was only after I gave my then unfinished book to someone who’s honest opinion, I valued. Her encouragement gave me the courage to finish. Now I can’t wait to write many more as I have so many more stories to tell. What I learned from writing this book is, it is not that easy. You may have the idea, know how you will begin and end the story, but it’s filling in the rest and making it a good and interesting read – now that’s the tough part! —————————————————————— About CJ Bolyne: CJ Bolyne is a first time author and Trinity is her first book. Born and raised in Southeastern Manitoba, Canada, CJ was an avid reader dreaming of the day she would write her own fantasy / sci-fi book. When she’s not writing, CJ spends her time on her farm with her husband and multiple pets. She runs a full-time pet grooming business. Her first book, Trinity, is the first in the series. Bolyne is also on Facebook. About Trinity: Payton thought she had a normal, everyday life. When a mysterious man suddenly appears, he shatters her world telling her that her entire life has been a lie. She is a god with the Guardians having lived for 1000’s of years. The Anords know where she is and he needs to protect her at all costs. Payton holds the key to saving humanity. However, a mysteriously familiar woman complicates everything. Trinity is available on Smashwords, Lulu, and Amazon. (This post is part of CJ Bolyne’s Trinity Blog Tour. You can find other guest posts here.) The Giveaway: a Rafflecopter giveaway
Guest Post: “The Magic of the Pacific Northwest” by Alyx Dellamonica
Why is the epicenter of the magical disaster in INDIGO SPRINGS and BLUE MAGIC physically located in Oregon? Why did I pick the Beaver State as the setting for my fictional town? I get asked this quite often, especially when I go to Portland. (At home, I sometimes get asked, “Why not Vancouver?”) I had a handful of reasons: I wanted to choose somewhere in the U.S.: The same magical spill, in Canada, would be handled differently. America has a more effective military infrastructure, an aggressive approach to dealing with emergencies, and enough resources and power to tell a worried world to butt out when it has problems. Canada, faced with the same crisis, would probably be obliged, quite quickly, to accept a lot of international aid . . . some of it, perhaps, heavily armed. I wanted the landscape of the Pacific Northwest: The environment plays a big role in both INDIGO SPRINGS and BLUE MAGIC; Albert Lethewood is a gardener, and the gardens of Indigo Springs are Cascadia gardens: bulb flowers in the spring, rhododendrons and azalea and hydrangea and roses. The enchanted, contaminated forest that grows up around the town of Indigo Springs is a West Coast rain forest. Its giant cedars are bound together by runaway ivy vines and populated by overgrown, magically altered Stellar’s jays, pileated woodpeckers, raccoons, squirrels, skunks and orb weaver spiders, all the species that I see every day in the local woods. I wanted the action to be near Mount Saint Helens: I’m realizing lately that I’m something of a volcano freak. I love the triangular cones of Mounts Baker, Hood, and Rainier. I’m astounded and awed by the remains of Saint Helens. I’ve seen Vesuvius and Mount Etna and Santorini. The only really compelling reason I can think of to go to Hawaii is to go to Volcano National Park. In terms of practical story reasons, volcanos and geothermal power offer a ready source of energy for the books’ well-wizards, and the intermingled threat and possibility represented by Mount Saint Helens is important. It broods in the background of the novel, literally threatening to blow whenever the wizards draw too much power. I love Portland, so why not blast the hell out of it? In fiction, at least, I really do hurt the things I love. I visit Portland once a year, for Orycon, and it’s a great city. I know lots of people there and I like the overall vibe: it feels like one of the few places I’ve been that could become home, if one could just hop over an international border and relocate easily. I love Powells Bookstore (who doesn’t love Powells?) and the coffee shops and the parks and the weather and all my friends there are wonderful. Putting the far edge of the magical disaster within spitting distance of Portland–having Portland be the frontline of the effort to contain the contaminated forest–appealed to me somehow. When the people in my own backyard ask “Why Portland? Why not Vancouver?” I like to tell them that I wanted to leave myself room for the damage to spread out in BLUE MAGIC. And it does–one storyline plays out at a decommissioned air force base on the Nevada/Utah border (Wendover, which is the base the atomic bomb missions originated) and there are scenes in Tuscany, the Sahara desert, Atlanta, and the enormous toystore in New York City, FAO Schwarz, and Assateague Island Park National Seashore. While the story begins with four people in the basement of an old house in a fictional Oregon town, trying desperately to contain a magical spill, it reaches a lot further as the enchantment and its effects continue to spread. But Oregon is still the starting point; by the time BLUE MAGIC ends, it’s certainly the most magic-drenched place on earth. Since what I’ve seen of Oregon and its people is downright enchanting, that seems entirely appropriate. —————————————————————————- About Blue Magic Alyx Dellamonica’s new book, Blue Magic, the sequel to the critically-acclaimed, Sunburst Award–winning contemporary fantasy debut, Indigo Springs, goes on sale this Tuesday, April 10th! This powerful sequel starts in the small town in Oregon where Astrid Lethewood discovered an underground river of blue liquid—Vitagua—that is pure magic. Everything it touches is changed. The secret is out—and the world will never be the same. Astrid’s best friend, Sahara, has been corrupted by the blue magic, and now leads a cult that seeks to rule the world. Astrid, on the other hand, tries to heal the world. Conflicting ambitions, star-crossed lovers, and those who fear and hate magic combine in a terrible conflagration, pitting friend against friend, magic against magic, and the power of nations against a small band of zealots, with the fate of the world at stake. Blue Magic is a powerful story of private lives changed by earthshaking events that will ensnare readers in its poignant tale of a world touched by magic and plagued by its consequences. About the Author You may know Alyx Dellamonica already from her fabulous “Buffy Rewatch” series on Tor.com, but here are some more fun facts: Alyx lives in Vancouver, Canada, where she sings in a community choir and takes thousands of digital photographs. In 2003, soon after finishing her first novel, Indigo Springs, the Supreme Court of B.C. ruled in favor of legalized same-sex marriage. A month later, she achieved a lifelong dream by marrying her long-term partner, writer and wine critic Kelly Robson, at one of their favorite places, the UBC Botanical Gardens.