Short story sale: "Cinderella City."

[seanan_mcguire]

So there's this anthology coming out in March, called Tales from the Ur-Bar. Every story takes place in a different location and time period, and by the time I was invited to the anthology, my usual time periods had all been taken, leaving me with the early 1900s. Everyone assumed I would write steampunk. I wrote gaslamp instead, which is a subtle distinction. I did it out of annoyance, I'll admit, and then, I...I liked it. I had a good time. I enjoyed the setting, I enjoyed the characters, and I enjoyed writing about a cranky alchemist using cocktails as her magical weapon of choice.

Jennifer Brozek asked me whether I'd consider submitting a short story for her first DAW anthology, Human for a Day. I said "sure," and pitched a story involving the Fighting Pumpkins and the harvest queen and the Homecoming Game. And I tried to write it, I really did, but my heart kept drifting back to San Francisco in the early 1900s, when the fog was silver and the bridges were gold. And this is why Jenn got the sheepish "I appear to have written the wrong story," message. A story which she was gracious enough to let me submit anyway. And so...

"Cinderella City," being the second adventure of Mina Norton, James Holly, and Margaret Holly (although she's asleep for the entire story, so it's mostly just Mina and James) has been sold to Jennifer Brozek for her anthology Human for a Day. It involves the city of San Francisco, an evil plot, a potential earthquake, absinthe, and lots of pigeons.

Some of the pigeons are on fire. I'm pretty pleased.

It looks like I'm going to be writing a whole series of stories about Mina and company; I'm starting to see the overall shape of their story, and with me, that usually means I'm pretty much doomed. But I don't mind that much. I like it in the gaslight. It's all very pretty there. And besides, I get a discount at the bar.

Comments

[fayanora.livejournal.com]

I like Steampunk. Never heard of gaslight til today. Closest I have to either is something I'm not sure what I'd call it... my Lord Ottoman Lichter stories take place in the 1920s, and he has invented things like a fusion engine and a time machine. Which doesn't go through time in the usual fashion. Linear time, as such, does not exist in that storyverse. He could go back in time and kill his grandfathers before his parents were conceived, return to his own time, and nothing will have changed.

I love my Lord Lichter character. He's loads of fun. He's a highly eccentric genius who occasionally cross-dresses, and in the first story he falls in love with his future self (who was cross-dressing at the time). I feel sorry for his poor friend, Sir Jonathan Holmes.

[seanan-mcguire.livejournal.com]

Gaslamp is a lot less focused on the mad science. Sometimes it's basically steampunk with magic, instead of heavy technology.

[fayanora.livejournal.com]

For some reason, I am reminded of my character Lyria, who visited Earth some time in our era and got lots of ideas from it. She uses magic in her fortress to mimic Earth technology, like using "sun crystals" for lightbulbs (only, sun crystals put light bulbs to shame) or making magic microscopes that put electron microscopes to shame. Lyria is like a mad scientist without the madness or the science. More of a determined, dark, true neutral sorceress with mysterious goals and a scientific aspect to her magic.

BTW, I also borrowed your "living knowe" idea from the Toby Daye books, and mixed it with the dimensional expansion of Doctor Who's TARDIS, for Lyria's fortress. She mentions in one story that a Fae friend taught her how to do it.