From the best-selling author of The Chronicles of Necromancer Gail Z Martin, we bring you an original new urban fantasy series:
Welcome to Trifles & Folly, an antique and curio shop with a dark secret.
Proprietor Cassidy Kincaide continues a family tradition begun in 1670 – acquiring and neutralizing dangerous supernatural items. It’s the perfect job for Cassidy, whose psychic gift lets her touch an object and know its history. Together with her business partner Sorren, a 500-year-old vampire and former jewel thief, Cassidy makes it her business to get infernal objects off the market. When mundane antiques suddenly become magically malicious, it’s time for Cassidy and Sorren to get rid of these Deadly Curiosities before the bodies start piling up…
Why the critics loved it:
“Martin weaves together fact, fiction, and the supernatural to create a realistic underworld for modern Charleston, S.C” – Publishers Weekly
“Familiar, accessible, and enjoyable, Deadly Curiosities is the kind of book to have serious crossover appeal for urban fantasy and horror readers alike.” – Beauty in Ruins
“I found myself emotionally invested in the outcome of each one, even the dog, and when they were facing the badest, strongest, entity, I was so nervous, I had butterflies in my stomach worried over what would happen to them. Deadly Curiosities is a great combination of paranormal and mystery…” – Much Loved Books
Why we love it:
A spooky new urban fantasy for fans of Warehouse 13 and Buff the Vampire Slayer: Deadly Curiosities effortlessly demonstrates Martin’s incredible world building skills in a can’t-put-down tale of paranormal fantasy, set against the highly original setting of modern-day Charleston. With Deadly Curiosities 2 on the way for early 2016 now’s a great time join Cassidy and her team.
Jordan helps kids on the run find their way back home. He’s good at that. He should be – he’s a runaway himself.
Sometimes he helps the kids in other, stranger, ways. He looks like a regular teenager, but he’s not. He acts like he’s not exactly human, but he is. He treads the line between mundane reality and the world of the supernatural.
Desdaemona also knows the non-human world far too well. She tracks Jordan down and enlists his aid in searching for her lost sister Fay, who did a Very Bad Thing involving an immortal. This may be a mistake – for both of them. Too many people are interested now, and some of them are not people at all.
I’ve always liked ghost stories. Well, let’s say that I’ve always had a love/hate relationship with ghost stories. I love them when it’s daylight and the lights are on. I’m not so keen on them in the dark.
As a kid, I remember being scared of some of the oddest stuff. There was a children’s encyclopedia that had an entry on “hallucinations” and the drawing accompanying the definition gave me nightmares for a week—no idea why.
Even so, I kept coming back to re-runs of shows like The Twilight Zone, Outer Limits, Night Gallery, Tales from the Crypt, Alfred Hitchcock Presents and the monster movies that used to run on Saturday afternoon TV. And I loved any book I could get my hands on that included magic, witches, ghosts, and the supernatural. One of my favorite books in middle school was Jane-Emily about a girl being haunted by the ghost of her vindictive cousin.
I remember watching the old monster movie Them about giant radioactive ants destroying the world. I was eating popcorn and watching the movie on TV alone in the dark. All of a sudden, a huge beast with black shaggy fur and a hideous, green-eyed gorilla face jumped out at me from behind the couch. I think in that case, my dad got more than he bargained for because even after he took off the mask and the fur coat, I wouldn’t stop screaming until every light in the house was on. #ParentingFail
As a kid, cemeteries were favorite places. My mom was a teacher and had to stay late at school to grade papers. When I was 10 or 11, she would let me go up the block and wander around the old historic cemetery (times were different then). It’s a beautiful place with a lot of historic graves, and I used to pass the time by reading the epitaphs and making up stories about the people. In high school, I planned the family vacation to make sure we hit Salem, Massachusetts so we could go to all the witch trial museums, and some of the old cemeteries.
Nowadays, I absolutely love going on ghost tours when I visit a city. Rome, London, Dublin, New Orleans, Charleston, and more—it’s always on the itinerary. I’ve dragged my family through the Capuchin crypts in Rome where the monks used human bones for decorating, and on tours of cemeteries in several countries.
I’m more a fan of ghost/suspense types of scary movies. I don’t do slasher/gore flicks. But I do love something like The Woman in Black and Rose Red that have a good, creepy vibe. When it comes to books, quite a bit of what I read includes vampires, magic, ghosts and the supernatural, although it tends to skirt being outright horror. I enjoy Stephen King’s stuff, but I have to admit that after I read IT I kept the lights on!
My Days of the Dead blog tour runs through October 31 with never-before-seen cover art, brand new excerpts from upcoming books and recent short stories, interviews, guest blog posts, giveaways and more! Plus, I’ll be including extra excerpt links for stories and books by author friends of mine. And, a special 50% off discount from Double-Dragon ebooks! You’ve got to visit the participating sites to get the goodies, just like Trick or Treat! Details here: www. AscendantKingdoms.com
Trick or Treat: Enjoy an excerpt from Buttons, the short story that led to the Deadly Curiosities book series here.
And a bonus excerpt from Collector, one of my Deadly Curiosities Adventures short stories here.
Deadly Curiosities by Gail Z. Martin is available now in the UK, US and as a DRM-free eBook from the Rebellion Store.
Why write an urban fantasy series after three successful epic fantasy series? Because it’s fun. (P.S. That’s the same reason I’ll be writing a steampunk series for 2015, too.)
Truth is, a lot of the same interests run between my epic and urban fantasy. Scratch the surface, and find a history major and museum geek.
Plunk me down in a major city with time to kill, and I’ll find the museums. (Heck, I’ll find them in a minor city if you give me time.) And yes, I read the plaques underneath the objects, even when I’ve got the audio tour. I love discovering cool old stuff, weird objects, creepy funeral customs, and pretty things from the past.
In Deadly Curiosities, my main character Cassidy can read the history and strong memories/magic imprinted on an object. I don’t claim that ability, but I do have a wild imagination, and more often than not, I can close my eyes and feel the past around me. (Note: I avoid doing that when touring places like the Tower of London.)
While Deadly Curiosities happens in modern-day Charleston, SC, it’s a storyline steeped in the past. “Buttons” was the short story I wrote for Solaris’s award-winning Magic: The Esoteric and Arcane anthology (and reprinted this year in the British Fantasy Society’s Unexpected Journeys anthology). It was a contemporary story with the characters you’ll meet in the novel. But before that, I had written short stories in the Deadly Curiosities world spanning the 1500’s and 1700’s for other anthologies.
Sorren, my nearly six hundred year-old vampire, is the thread of continuity through all the stories. In Vanities (originally published in the British Fantasy Society’s The Bitten Word), we see Sorren’s first job for the Alliance, battling a demon in Antwerp in 1565. I’ve written two other stand-alone short stories that follow up on Vanities: Wild Hunt and Dark Legacy, that show more of Sorren’s origins, tell the story of his maker, Alard, and hint at the creation of the Alliance.
The very first story about Trifles and Folly, the antique shop in Deadly Curiosities, appeared in the Rum and Runestones anthology and was set in the 1770’s, just before the American Revolution. The anthology prompt required pirates and magic, which is what Steer a Pale Course delivers. That story was popular enough to get me invited back to the Spells and Swashbucklers anthology, with The Low Road. Then Marie O’Regan tapped me for The Mammoth Book of Ghost Stories by Women, and Among the Shoals Forever was born.
Sorren’s past is Old World—Europe and old gods and ancient monsters. His maker battled Viking warriors and gained the help of a Norse Seior. A hundred years later, Sorren travels to Charleston to set up Trifles and Folly in 1663, forging a long-standing arrangement with one of Cassidy’s ancestors.
I know that Europe has phone booths older than anything we’ve got here in the States, but Charleston is one of our oldest cities. Unlike New Orleans, Charleston hasn’t been heavily used for urban fantasy, which made it a fresh location with much of the same charm and danger. Charleston, like New Orleans, has a very prominent European connection, and when you walk its cobblestone streets, you can feel in your bones the truth of Faulkner’s quote: “The past isn’t dead. It isn’t even past.”
As in New Orleans, the younger sons of European gentry came to Charleston to make their way. Men with service to the crown received land grants and set up sprawling plantations. Fortunes were won and lost. And while Charleston is known as the “Holy City” for its hundreds of churches, beneath that piety ran rivers of blood in brothels, duels and slavery.
Look beyond the beautiful mansions and gardens heavy with bougainvillea, Spanish moss and gardenia, and you’ll find the tragedy of the slave trade. Charleston was part of the “Triangle Trade” with the Caribbean—molasses, rum and slaves. By some accounts, the majority of slaves in the U.S. came through Charleston Harbor. Those slaves brought their beliefs with them, religions that melded and changed to create the Voodoo of New Orleans and the Hoodoo of the Lowcountry. Charleston’s past rests uneasily, not far below the surface.
While New Orleans has always embraced its wild side, Charleston opted for repressed propriety. But like a convention of accountants in Las Vegas, even the proper folks have to let loose sometime, and Charleston’s back alleys were the place for indulgence. Duels were fought. Pirates were by turn welcomed and shunned in Charleston depending on the benefit to the city’s fathers. Blackbeard himself blockaded the city in 1718. The city’s history is full bad boys and wild girls.
I’m very excited about Deadly Curiosities and the chance to spin tales about haunted objects, dark magical items and cursed heirlooms. And I’m thrilled to be working on the second book in the Deadly Curiosities series for 2015 with even more thrills and chills.
If you want more of Cassidy, Sorren and Teag right away, check out my free novella on Wattpad.com: The Final Death. Coffin Box and Wicked Dreams also continue the adventures of Cassidy and her team, and you can find them with my other ebook short stories on Kindle, Kobo and Nook.
Cassidy and crew will be turning up in a couple more anthologies this year. Retribution, an all-new Deadly Curiosities adventure, is featured in the Athena’s Daughters anthology by Silence in the Library Publishing. The Restless Dead will be in the Realms of Imagination anthology from Dark Oak Books.
So the next time you pick up that family heirloom, pay attention if your fingers tingle or you catch a glimpse of something that isn’t there. Cassidy can tell you, the past may be gone, but it doesn’t stay buried.
I’ll be celebrating the launch of Deadly Curiosities the whole week of June 22-29 with more than 30 different guest blog posts, a Facebook launch party featuring prizes, guest authors and surprises, podcasts, three different excerpts, a Reddit give-away/AskMeAnything and a Goodreads party/give-away. Get all the details at www.DeadlyCuriosities.com, follow me on Facebook.com/WinterKingdoms or on Twitter @GailZMartin!
I’ll be signing in major cities across the U.S. and in England, Wales and Scotland this summer—the full book tour schedule is on my website, so please stop by and say hello!
About the Author Gail Z. Martin writes epic and urban fantasy, steampunk and short stories. She is the auth
or of the Chronicles of the Necromancer series, the Fallen Kings Cycle series and the Ascendant Kingdoms Saga series of epic fantasy books, as well as the Deadly Curiosities urban fantasy world and coming in 2015, Iron and Blood, a Steampunk novel, co-written with Larry N. Martin. Gail is a frequently contributor to US and UK anthologies. She also writes two series of ebook short stories: The Jonmarc Vahanian Adventures and the Deadly Curiosities Adventures.
Deadly Curiosities by Gail Z. Martin is one of our big release this summer – a dark urban fantasy with a dark of magic and a smidgeon of the arcane. Gail is one of our bestsellers at Solaris and it’s a delight to welcome her back to the fold…
Cassidy Kincaide owns Trifles & Folly, an antique/curio store and high-end pawn shop in Charleston, South Carolina that is more than what it seems. Dangerous magical and supernatural items sometimes find their way into mortal hands or onto the market, and Cassidy is part of a shadowy Alliance of mortals and mages whose job it is to take those deadly curiosities out of circulation.
Welcome to Trifles & Folly, an antique and curio shop with a dark secret. Proprietor Cassidy Kincaide continues a family tradition begun in 1670—acquiring and neutralizing dangerous supernatural items. It’s the perfect job for Cassidy, whose psychic gift lets her touch an object and know its history. Together with her business partner Sorren, a 500 year-old vampire and former jewel thief, Cassidy makes it her business to get infernal objects off the market. When mundane antiques suddenly become magically malicious, it’s time for Cassidy and Sorren to get rid of these Deadly Curiosities before the bodies start piling up
So that’s Deadly Curiosities, but what has Gail been up to?
Last week she appeared over on Reddit for an AMA where she answered, well, anything – including a question about why we appear to be obsessed with the undead…
I’ve read a bunch of theories … everything from being a reaction to an economic recession to a way of dealing with global uncertainty and rapid culture change. Maybe. I don’t know.
I have liked vampires since I was about 5 years old and watched the old Dark Shadows soap opera back in the early 1960s. (Not sure why my mom let me, but hey, it shaped my life!) I was totally hooked. I even dictated a story for my grandmother to write down (I couldn’t spell yet) about a vampire. I playacted vampires (seriously–some kids made a race car out of a big cardboard box. I made a coffin and then practiced sitting up with great style.)
I wouldn’t say that I’m any more concerned about death/dying/afterlife than anyone else. I have my beliefs, but I’m not in a hurry to test them out. I didn’t have any really early childhood trauma of losing someone. I just always thought that ghosts, vampires, werewolves and magic were super cool, and that’s what I liked to read/watch so it’s what I wanted to write. But you’re right–the undead certainly do show up in my writing!
She’s written a blog post for SFX magazine about how the book was written in the wake of her father’s death and features a great passion for the past, as well as a love of its setting – the American city of Charleston (our PR guy and history nerd, Mike, just got all excited because Charleston was founded in 1670 as ‘Charles Towne’ in honour of King Charles II).
She also talked to Bull Spec about her use of language and how even fitting words can lift a reader right out of the story:
There are a couple of etymology web sites that have become bookmarks on my computer because I am frequently checking to see when a word or phrase was first used, and how it was used. For example, people have been puking since the Middle Ages, but they didn’t barf until recently. And while they have been pissing for hundreds of years, it’s only in the last few decades that anyone has been pissed off.
The reviews have already started to trickle in too over on Goodreads and Bibliophile’s Diary gave it a five out of five, adding:
No spoilers guys, but I really enjoyed the plot and how the story turned out. Along with the great setting the magic is fascinating. There are magics we’ve all heard of, such as Cassidy’s ability to read objects she touched, but then there were ones I was unfamiliar with such as Weaver magic and the system created for it. Can we also talk about the Voudon (Voodoo) in the novel? I have such a love for that particular character, Lucinda, you wouldn’t believe. I really wanted more about that side of the world, I’m hoping we see more about the Voudon or local magic in future books.
But if you can’t wait, Gail is offering an online multi-part novella FOR FREE that’s set in the same universe. The Final Death is a prequel to Deadly Curiosities and here’s the blurb:
Vampires, vengeful ghosts and Voodoo are all in a day’s work for Cassidy Kincaide, owner of Trifles and Folly, an antique and curio store in historic, haunted Charleston, SC whose real mission is to get dangerous magical objects off the market and out of the wrong hands. When developers disturb old graves, Cassidy and her team land in the middle of big trouble as the restless dead return to finish old business and feast on the blood of the living. A novella in 5 parts–watch for new additions!
