Post date: Sep 02, 2012 6:44:36 PM
My new novel "Blood Maiden" is now available in paperback and e-book.
Blood Maiden is downloadable in a wide variety of e-book formats on
"Blood Maiden" is an urban fantasy set in the City, where gods from all mythologies mashup with the every day. Monster infested fog sometimes sweeps through the lunch hour. Occasionally traffic backs up because the Blood river overflows. Bicyclists can shortcut through the Sumerian underworld to City park as long as they don’t mind a few desiccated zombies gumming them. That’s life in the City.
Blood Maiden, a Mayan death goddess, is starting her senior year at Himinbjorg High, where her skin, hair, even the shape of her nose mark her as an outsider among the teenage Norse gods. While at home in the Mayan Underworld, anyone who is invited as a guest must face a series of trials. The winners will gain a boon from the Death Lords. Since the heroes never listen to Blood Maiden’s advice, they end up trapped in the underworld. Meanwhile, Blood Maiden's parents think that she'd be a great death goddess if she just had a little more self confidence.
Her friends have their own problems. Blood Maiden's friend, P.D., swallows a pine needle and gives birth to Raven, who keeps trying to steal the sun, moon, and stars stored in the hope chest in the living room. The twins, Isis and Nepthys, can't get any respect. Coatlique is impenetrable and isn't that fun to bring up on a date. While Princess Danae, Danny, has been lojacked by her father because of the "curse" that she's under.
If Blood Maiden can just figure out how to deal with Zeus perving on Danny, how to ask Danny to the winter dance, all the tangled prophecies everyone is under, and her parent's expectations, just maybe she'll figure out what she's supposed to do with her life without killing anyone.
Or they could all decide to be heroes."
"Blood Maiden is basically is 200+ pages of various types of girls being heroic, variously getting on each others nerves and helping each other. It's funny and horrible things happen, because it's based on mythology. The girls variously deal and fail to deal and then redeal.
I got the idea for the story when I was reading the "Pupol Voh" for research on the Mayan Hero Twins story for NaNoWrimo. I came across a 1.5 page description of their um, generation. Their mother, Blood Maiden, comes off as Snow White, if she'd saved her own damned self and it seemed to me that there are a lot of stories about heroes where a woman (see how I invert that) sleeps with a god, becomes pregnant, survives a page of hardship and then it's twenty years later and the hero is off to adventure. Clever and brave and whatever because his father (who hasn't been around for 20ish years) is a god. Um, okay. What about that really brilliant saved her own damned self character that I got for a page and a half? I wanted more Blood Maiden.
Write what you want. It is one of my goals as a writer to write female positive stories that more than just pass the Bechtel test, where women have a single conversation about something other than men. I want to write women being heroic in all the different ways that can mean. Not just being warrior princesses, but getting the job done. Whether that's fighting monsters or raising the next generation of heroes.
The next several posts will be "Blood Maiden" specific as I talk about various aspects of the characters and explain details about the world.